IAB Statement on Submitting Appeals to the IAB
View this statement in the Datatracker:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/statement-iab-statement-on-submitting-appeals-to-the-iab/
4 February 2026
As part of the IETF's Internet standards process[1], the IAB has
responsibilities[2] for handling appeals. This statement describes the
requirements and expectations for submitting an appeal to the IAB.
All appeals submitted to the IAB are required to include the:
1.1. specific action or decision undertaken by IESG being appealed;
1.2. grounds on which the appeal is based; and
1.3. remedy sought by the complainant(s).
All appeals submitted to the IAB are required to be:
2.1. written in English.
2.2. submitted in a text format suitable for directly posting to the
IETF Datatracker, which currently accepts plain text and
Markdown.
2.3. initiated within two months of the public knowledge of the action
or decision being challenged as per RFC 2026[3].
2.4. self-contained, i.e., all necessary details of the appeal must be
included in the submitted text . The appeal text may contain URLs
to IETF websites (e.g., *.ietf.org and *.rfc-editor.org), IANA
websites (e.g., *.iana.org) and external resources explicitly
agreed to by the IETF or the Working Group for the activity under
appeal (e.g., YouTube, a GitHub project). URLs to non-IETF
websites and resources may be included, but they must be
informative, providing only background or historical information.
It must be possible to process the appeal without reading them.
Other attachments will be ignored and not considered as part of
the submitted appeal.
2.5. concise, i.e., when background information is necessary for
context, it should be clearly separated from the required
information (as outlined above). Extraneous information should be
omitted; egregiously verbose appeals will not be processed.
The IAB will handle appeals such that:
3.1. appeals are considered contributions to the IETF as described in
RFC 5378.
3.2. appeals submitted under conditions that disclaim or limit the
applicability of IETF policies, including claims that the
policies outlined in the Note Well do not apply and will not be
processed.
3.3. appeals that do not meet the requirements listed above will not
be processed; in such cases, the public record will include an
acknowledgement of receipt with the reason the appeal cannot be
processed; and a new appeal that meets the requirements may be
submitted until the original deadline or up to 14 days after the
IAB's acknowledgement of the original appeal, whichever is later.
3.4. Once the IAB acknowledges receiving an appeal that meets the
requirements, it cannot be revised. If necessary, an appeal may
be withdrawn and a new appeal may be filed.
Matters relating to legal issues should be addressed to the IETF
Administration LLC at [email protected].
[1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2026
[2] https://www.iab.org/role/appeals/
[3] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2026#section-6.5
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