Interesting.
You are right and you don't have to blame and there is no sense to
excuse the current rejection of visas.
Instead of speaking always of a division Global North and Global South
there should be a support for your action to save an important event
like Wikimania.
Kind regards
On 23/06/2017 16:24, Jean-Philippe Béland wrote:
Wikimedia Canada was not the requester behind having Wikimania in
Montreal, so it cannot be blamed for that. A "Wikimania Montreal
Committee", now defunct, was behind the request to WMF to have
Wikimania in Montreal and they did not coordinate with the chapter in
doing this. As a chapter, we are picking up some of the slack right
now to ensure a smooth conference, but I don't think it is fair to
blame the chapter for not doing this.
Jean-Philippe Béland
Vice President, Wikimedia Canada
User:Amqui
On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 6:57 AM, Lodewijk <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I wonder, do we keep track of the number of visa rejections year
over year, so that we know in comparison?
There are of course many factors that go into venue selection -
one of them is visa (another is security, political stability
etc). The countries that I remember going relatively smoothly were
the ones where the organizers sought a collaboration with the
foreign affairs of their country, to get some help. I don't know
if Wikimedia Canada was able to accomplish that. But it does mean
that a general bad reputation is not necessarily a bad rejection
rate for this particular conference. (if memory serves me well,
WMIL did a great job in this respect in 2011, for example)
Lodewijk
On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Felix Nartey <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
This is a big issue and I think should be looked into more
seriously. Similar challenges were faced by participants from
the Global South selected to attend the CC Summit in Toronto
early this year.
This should inform future selection for all conference venues
as it allows for poor representation of the Global South at
international conferences.
Cheers,
On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Gnangarra
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
These issues are a symptom of the closed processes that
have occurred firstly with Montreal and next year with
middle eastern attendees to Cape Town . Acknowledging
that the change was because of the amount effort put in by
unsuccessful bidders was said to be wasted its showing
that some things need to be opened for community
discussion before decisions are made.
That it may be better for the WMF to require applicants
to first obtain a visa before being confirmed for the
scholarships in the future. Perth/Australia is another
place that visas for attendees wouldnt have been a big issue.
On 22 June 2017 at 17:43, cs <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
That’s one of the reasons why I proposed Bangkok,
Thailand, for 2019 - apart from its extremely
tolerant social cultures and very low cost, while
being a very modern hi-tech city easily accessible
by direct flights from most parts of the world.
Almost everyone can enter the country for at least
15 days without even a visa. Thailand only makes it
difficult for people wanting to stay longer (years) in
the country on the pretext of being tourists.
It’s a shame for the visa refusals, but perhaps this
will open up the possibility to some refused
scholarship applications.
Kudpung.
On 22Jun, 2017, at 16:23, Bodhisattwa Mandal
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi,
The main topic of discussion among the scholarship
recipients from global south this month is the high
visa rejection rate by Canadian embassies from these
countries.
This year, we had 7 scholarship recipients from
Bengali community, 4 from India and 3 from
Bangladesh. Already 3 out of 4 scholarship recipients
from Indian part of the communities got their visa
rejected, others are waiting. Although I am hoping
for the best for all the scholarship recipients, but
may be news of more rejections are coming soon.
Wikimania should be organised in a visa friendly
country, and not in those countries where global
south citizens are not allowed to enter even for a
6-days conference. Otherwise, a global community is
not truly presented.
Best wishes,
Bodhisattwa
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