utf-8 encoding is only one step in IRI encoding. Correct IRI encoding is non trivial and doesn't fall into the support policy for 2.7 (bug/security fixes). I think that the best that can be done for 2.7 is to enhance the documentation around HTTPConnection.__init__ (unicode hostnames should be IDNA-encoded with the built-in IDNA encoder) and HTTPConnection.request/putrequest noting that unicode paths should be IRI encoded, with a link to RFC 3987.