As Canada hosted the world’s largest conference on HIV/AIDS, researchers from the Global South found it very hard to get visas and participate.
David Gillespie, a researcher at Cardiff University, had shown up to the panel in Montreal expecting to hear experts discuss the stigma that having HIV still carries in health-care settings.Instead, he recounted in an email, an organizer came out to explain that there had been a change of plans — the panellists had all been unable to enter the country.
In response to a question from media this week, Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos called it a “human tragedy” that so many people had been unable to attend, adding that “a conference of this size, nature and value needs more people in the conference than were able to come.”The conference had an ambitious agenda to “define future research agendas” and “chart a new consensus on overcoming the HIV epidemic,” according to its website.
In an email, Aidan Strickland, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, said the department understood the “disappointment” from some applicants who had not received visas in time, adding that it had worked with the event organizers and prioritized visas for delegates. He also argues that requirements that applicants prove that they’re economically independent and won’t stay in Canada after an event are overly broad and can be used to discriminate against experts who aren’t white or from the West.
“I am a scholar who works on issues affecting the Black population,” he said. “I don’t see any reason why I cannot host Black-focused events in Canada, except that if I’m inviting Black scholars from Africa, the IRCC may not let them in. It’s like living in a house where you can’t have your friends over because your landlord won’t open the gate for them.”
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