By Mutabazi Sam Stewart
In a world when globalization and international interaction is at its peak, travelers and globe trotters keep enduring situations that are not very friendly. More and more people are crisscrossing from one city to another to do business and to attend to other personal issues. Air transport is by far the most common international travel but for one to use this means of transport, one has to go through difficult circumstances which unfortunately, would be avoided if stakeholders in the travel industry and embassies cared to do things differently from what has been done for many years.
According to a study commissioned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT), the world’s airlines flew almost 28 million scheduled flight departures and carried over two billion passengers in 2006. The growth of world air travel has averaged approximately 5% per year over the past 30 years. For majority of these travelers, moving from one destination to another is not easy. Various countries have different travel restrictions which most often are not only annoying but are degrading and dehumanizing. People across the globe have spoken about the hallowing experiences they have gone through trying to get travel documents from different embassies and consulates at different entry or exits points in different cities and towns.
There are some norms and tendencies which are practiced the world over and they have become acceptable even though they are wrong and unacceptable to most people. It is known that norms are rarely questioned. But this doesn’t mean that they are acceptable or noble. It just means that a sizable number of people, though not believing wholly in the same practices, may not have the requisite determination to change them or the people who are supposed to change them are reluctant to change them because of one reason or the other. When a practice is repeated for a long time, it becomes a norm and when a norm is practiced over a long period, it becomes a custom or a culture. One norm that has been practiced for a long time relates to the issue of visa handling and travel document handling by embassies and governments in various capitals around the world.
Queuing for services at airport lounges and standing in open spaces while awaiting a visa to enable one travel from one destination to another is an unacceptable norm that has come to be accepted by most travelers as a normal procedure whereas not. . It is a common sight at most airports to see people herded together in a queue when they are going to be cleared at airports. With the threat of terrorism after the incident of September 11th 2001 in America, many security agencies have upped their alertness to the fullest to protect the traveling public. This has however become more of an inconvenience than a protection. People are striped of their clothes, ordered to remove their shoes and belts and told to pass through metal detectors more times than necessary. All this is in the name of “we can’t leave anything to chance”. These security people are as annoying as terrorists themselves.
The second category of humiliation is that experienced at embassies. Most embassies do not have enough space for visitors let alone, people who come to collect travel documents. In the hot tropical regions of Africa especially, travelers have to stand in open spaces at different embassies waiting to be cleared. Very few embassies have well furnished lounges where people can wait as their visas are being processed. The reason for this anomaly is not that all embassies or their home governments can not afford to put up those structures but rather it is because it is a practice that has been inherited from past generations. The problem of relegation of human dignity at embassies is induced by international policy failure where the world has not taken interest in investing in infrastructure that is comfortable enough for people who intend to travel, but has instead opted to invest large sums of money to ensure that passengers get the best comfort only when they are aboard a plane, not before. Put simply, it doesn’t matter what people go through when they want to travel even if they have to stand in a long queue on an extremely hot day at the South African high commission in Kampala or at the French embassy in Congo Brazzaville. What is more worrying is the fact that the world is in unison on this. It doesn’t matter whether one is from a developed or developing country, the mistreatment that travelers endure in both instances is, to a great extent similar.
At the American and British embassy/high commission in Kampala, the Ugandan public complained for quite a long time about the humiliation those two missions were subjecting the applicants to but nothing much was changed. With the relocation of the two missions outside the Central Business District of Kampala, most people thought that the issue of putting in place a pleasant waiting room for visa applicants would be provided. This was never to be the case. Although the British High Commission for instance decentralized its visa handling section, it did not put up a specific structure where its clients who may need other services can wait from. Although the American embassy has the largest and latest structure among all foreign missions in Uganda, it doesn’t cater for people who come to seek for visa and travel information. One would be tempted to believe that, possibly the architects of that building wanted to punish all the people who come to this embassy to seek to the said services. Otherwise what would be the rationale of designing the embassy in such away that the car park accommodates no more than fifteen cars at a time and is located five hundred meters from the main embassy entrance? What about the five security checks one has to be subjected to before they are allowed to proceed any specific office?
Something that doesn’t need mention is the money that people pay in form of application fees to get visas. A visa application fee to US now costs $131 while the one of UK goes for £67. It is not automatic that when one pays that money they would automatically get the much sought after travel document. What one is sure of is the fact that the money they pay is non refundable irrespective of whether one is successful or not. Thousands of people, especially from developing countries, mainly in Africa apply for visas to Europe and America which they never get. Tales have been told of people who have applied more than ten times without getting the visa. This translates into millions of dollars which developed countries siphon from developing countries in an indirect manner.
Improving the current trend and process of visa acquisition at any embassy is not only the right thing to do but also the sensible thing to do. It is the right thing to do because traveling from one destination (country) to another is part and parcel of human life and development. It is a sensible thing to do because human beings everywhere are supposed to be treated with some level of dignity at all times. The continued failure by the world to recognize their failure in this endeavor is not only a misdemeanor but a serious threat to world development where the wrong norm has come to be accepted as the right practice across the globe. The act of making people stand in the sun for long hours is not only demeaning to the largest number of people that travel, but it also brings to the fore the uncaring attitude of persons responsible for developing policies and regulations that guide the transport sector and the diplomatic interconnectedness not only in the developing world but in the developed nations as well. I am not sure as to why it has taken the United Nations (UN) this long to a draft treaty for member countries to ratify which would require signatories to recognize that traveling from one country or destination to another in dignity is a human right, and a fundamental one at that.
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