How visa laws hamper development work — and what to do about it

Marie-Claire Wangari, a global health policy and advocacy consultant based in Nairobi, Kenya, is currently applying for scholarships to do a master’s program in the United States. The process is fraught with worry. “If I get this scholarship to go to the U.S. will I, number one, get my visa to allow me to study and, two, will I be able to successfully be able to do my studies without any fear of bias and discrimination?” she told Devex. Her concerns are not baseless. Research on study visas to the U.S. for 2022 showed that 54% of African students had their applications denied compared to just 9% of European students. Even when the visa is shorter-term to attend international development conferences, many also get their applications denied. Not just to the U.S. but to Europe, too. According to the Henley Passport Index, the best passports to have are those issued by Singapore, France, Spain, Japan, and Germany whilst the worst are from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. Data shows only 9% of European and North American academics experience visa challenges while 33% of those from Africa and 40% from Asia have issues. Yet the biggest sector events, including the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the World Health Assembly in Geneva, and the World Economic Forum in Davos, take place in fixed and costly locations that can be difficult to access. At the end of 2023, numerous African delegates were denied visas to travel to Paris for the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership Biennial Forum. Over 300 human rights defenders couldn’t attend RightsCon in Costa Rica for the same reason. And in 2022, attempting to board a plane for Canada to attend the International AIDS Society Conference, even the executive director of UNAIDS, Ugandan-born Winnie Byanyima, was “almost refused to board.” Whilst she made the event, others were not so lucky, instead represented on stage at times by empty chairs. Every year the global development sector is awash with murmurs of the speakers who should have been on a panel, students who never make it to their intended universities to study development, and the candidates who never were for NGO jobs they’d otherwise qualify for. Development experts and campaigners from the global south have called for change. At a time of polycrisis, the development sector must recognize visa and passport inequities as a challenge to advancing progress and treat it as an urgent agenda item, they told Devex. “How much do we need to beg? How much do we need to constantly plead? It happens every single year,” said South Africa-based Tian Johnson, founder and strategist of the African Alliance for HIV Prevention who was also stopped from boarding his flight to IAS 2022 because of visa issues. He has opted to no longer attend such “white-led” events. He believes the visa challenges contribute to a failure on the part of development organizations to represent the people they say they’re aiming to serve. “We’ve lost the plot when it comes to who these conferences are for,” he said. The impacts Limiting development professionals’ access to other countries prevents the sector from having maximum impact, said Shashika Bandara, a Sri Lankan doctoral candidate focusing on global health policy and governance at McGill University in Canada, who has had to navigate several difficult visa processes. Oftentimes those studying a disease, for example, are from the global south, he said, and might be best placed to apply for a certain job in the global north or need to meet with colleagues elsewhere. Visa restrictions therefore limit collaboration, withhold vital knowledge within certain groups, and prohibit the sharing of the experiences of those at the forefront of an issue, said the interviewees. “When you create a system which limits access to those who have done [important] work … you are missing out on experts,” said Bandara. It contributes to neo-colonialism, he said whilst Johnson described it as a form of racism. “This is not without consequences as international cooperation and multilateralism are vital for a functioning HIV response,” said Bijan​​​​ Farnoudi, director of communications and public affairs at IAS, in an email, calling it a “symptom of a global retreat of multilateralism and international cooperation.” Meanwhile, for global development organizations and workers, the costs are prohibitive. The average cost of a British short-term visa is $153, while a long-term one costs over $1,000. On top of that, lawyers’ fees can sit anywhere between $1,200 and $35,000. A U.S. working visa, excluding application fees and legal support, costs on average $4,000 while a Schengen one is lower at around $100 but will also incur legal support fees. The recruitment of foreign workers requires much more time and money. This heavily impacts organizations’ ability to take these workers on, said Chetal Patel, head of immigration at British law firm Bates Wells, which supports nonprofits and public sector entities. And the problem is only getting worse, Farnoudi said. “It would appear that obtaining visas is becoming more challenging in several parts of the world,” he said. Countries such as Australia, the U.K., and the U.S., have tightened their immigration processes over the last few years. And even when northern nations try to avoid the problem, it still may not work well. For AIDS 2024, Farnoudi said, the German authorities “agreed to a quick and unbureaucratic working relationship” yet several attendees still commented on the delays and 91 delegates reported encountering challenges, Farnoudi said, with only 85% of its scholarship recipients obtaining the necessary visa. What changes are needed to the system Instead of trying to remedy an individual visa problem and blaming the system, said Bandara, NGOs should be working on longer-term engagement with authorities to streamline the processes for potential workers and conference attendees. “If you’re an organization with global or national clout this should be on the top of your agenda,” he said. “If you’re an education institute … this should also be a priority, especially if your department is focussing on development or global health that requires a lot more collaboration.” Wangari suggested hosting events in easier-to-access countries, such as Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, South Africa, and Rwanda. But Johnson said there are also difficulties accessing visas for Africans traveling within Africa. “For a Nigerian attending a conference in Durban it is spectacularly difficult,” he said. But this may still not address the issues. Farnoudi highlighted that whilst a location might be easier to access in terms of visas, it might lack the infrastructure to host thousands and marginalize those visiting. For example, discrimination against those in the LGBTQ+ community, many of whom IAS conference attendees would belong to, is high. “[They] wouldn’t be considered conducive or even safe host countries for any of our conferences,” said Farnoudi. That said, conferences such as Women Deliver, the International Conference on Family Planning, and IAS rotate locations. IAS 2025 will take place in Rwanda and ICFP 2025 will take place in Colombia. But Johnson believes development professionals need “to decolonize our minds and think about how much gravitas and currency we are placing on conferences like those hosted by IAS and to really start looking at … Africans getting together in Africa.” When it comes to recruitment, Neela Saldanha, executive director of the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale, said on X that NGOs, foundations, and academia “should invest as much in understanding the visa process for employment as they do in understanding projects” and set up local offices that operate more like multinational offices with global career paths. Patel said she knew of several organizations already reviewing their recruitment and global mobility strategies “to determine if their approach to overseas recruitment remains viable in an ever-changing immigration environment.” In the U.K., for example, there are different sponsored and non-sponsored visas employers could support, such as family-based, ancestry, and youth-mobility routes, she added. “It’s important that organizations are aware of these as these could help with affordability and viability of the hire.”