Gerard, your comments are flippant and deflect from the serious risk that our volunteers and employees are being subject to.
Tunis is unsafe for LGBT+ people. None of our LGBT+ volunteers or employees should travel to tunis.
LGBT+ travellers risk 3 years in prison, not in theory, in practice foreign tourists are being held in prison. The police are actively setting up sting operations, having used Grindr to entrap gay men, search their phones to discover who their friends are and any LGBT+ material, then prosecute them for being homosexuals. Again not theory, this is evidence presented in the Tunis courts during prosecution. I and other Wikimedians at events have used Grindr and other LGBT+ social networks during Wikimedia conferences to talk to each other. I and other Wikimedians have openly discussed LGBT+ topics on Wikimedia public projects, this material is hardly secret from the Tunis police, neither should the WMF or any other Affiliate ever put LGBT+ volunteers in a position where we have to pretend not to be LGBT+.
The USA is unwelcoming, with trans people likely to be abused or humiliated during immigration and having their digital data stolen by the NSA, but they are not subject to the threat of a 3 year prison sentence solely for being LGBT+.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae WM-LGBT+ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT+
On Wed, 18 Sep 2019 at 06:42, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, To be honest, there are great reasons not to having meetings in the United States for similar reasons. The notion of conversion of homosexuality is alive and well, even though people who care to look at the science know that it does not work. The murder rate among LGBTI people is sky high. The country is highly discriminatory, not only because of race. The USA is a country at war, the numbers show why; more USA civilians die because of gun violence than do USA military personnel. The ease whereby the murder on women is explained away with arguments like "she was at the wrong time at the wrong place" and "boys will be boys".
The point, when you advocate against countries, there is hardly anywhere where your arguments don't hold. The objective is to educate and where we stay away our message will not be heard. The Dutch "Zwarte Piet" will no longer be black because of the foreign imposition of what is the discriminatory practice "blackface" in the USA. But I digress. We should engage all over the world particularly when the SDG are topical because what global effect will it have when we ostracise countries like Tunesia or the USA?
On Tue, 17 Sep 2019 at 23:33, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
It astonishing that the WMF and affiliates are supporting a conference in Tunis. The country is not safe for LGBT+ people, including tourists, despite what promotional holiday and travel websites imply.
I urge anyone who is LGBT+ and booked to go to this conference, including WMF employees, please reconsider and cancel your attendance. You will be putting yourself at unnecessary risk.
It speaks volumes that on the one hand the WMF wishes to fund travel and accommodation for a diversity working group, but then chooses to hold the meetings in a country where this year there are cases of the courts officially forcing anal examinations on suspected homosexuals to "prove" they are homosexuals, deny the existence of trans people, and where there has been a case of a foreign tourist going to prison for their homosexuality.
Thanks, Fae -- faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae WM-LGBT+ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT+
On Tue, 17 Sep 2019 at 20:26, Ad Huikeshoven ad@huikeshoven.org wrote:
tl;dr Wikipedia can engage millions, billions of people to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030
Wikimedians and Wikipedians around the world have been involved with Wikimedia 2030 since 2015. The strategic direction is to build the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge. Back in
2015 a
total of 193 members of the United Nations agreed to the 17 Sustainable Developments Goals to be reached by the year 2030. Last August many of
you
were in Stockholm, Sweden for Wikimania. The theme this year was
“Stronger
Together: Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals”.[1]
Michael Edson, founder and director of UN Live, the Museum of the UN in Kopenhagen, Denmark held a keynote and asked Wikipedia for help. The UN isn’t able to reach millions, billions of people on its own to have them work on achieving the SDGs.[2] Wikipedia reaches half a billion people
each
month. Millions of people have contributed to Wikipedia.
Of course Wikipedia can spread the knowledge about the SDGs and how to solve them in each country, and in each language. We can make a very good case for an “open access knowledge sharing project related to the Sustainable Development Goals that uses Wikipedia as a tool”. A lot of knowledge will have to be gathered locally about local solutions to local problems. We as a free knowledge movement have done so succesfully in the past. We can do succesfully now.
The one big reason to step upto the challenge is in the vision of the movement: “Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.” Imagine every single human having access to how to solve each of the Sustainable Development Goals in their locality, in their language.[3]
Another reason is part of our mission: to empower and engage people
around
the world to collect and develop educational content.[4] Might people involved with the movement be able to educate people why and how to solve global goals locally?
Knowledge about SDGs is just a small subset of all knowledge. It would
be a
big step for mankind to have exactly that knowledge available well before the year 2030.[5] It won’t impede anyone to collect and share knowledge outside that subset, however.
To make it happen imagine having a small office with a handful dedicated people in each country. People with the capacity to build partnerships
with
NGO’s, universities, research institutions, government agencies, groups
of
citizens who are already involved with the SDGs.[6] People with the capacity to organize SDG themed writing contests and SDG themed edit-a-thons with participants from interested parties.[7]
As written above, it has been agreed to build the essential
infrastructure
of the ecosystem of free knowledge. Why would it be worthwhile to invest
50
million dollar a year to build such an infrastructure?[8] With those tiny offices in each country we it can exactly be done what Michael Edson
begged
us to do: get millions (or billions) of people working together on global goals and share the knowledge they gathered. To connect people everywhere and catalyze global effort toward accomplishing the Sustainable
Development
Goals.
The Wikimedia movement has the capacity to raise the necessary funds through banners on Wikipedia on top of what is now already collected, and alreadt spent each year.[9] After a long period - over four years - of mainly inward looking activities of board and working groups, the time
has
come to look outwards. The works of our movement have influence globally and can have global impact. Not impact measured as number of articles, or number of editors retained, but impact on the real social life of seven billion people, by sharing knowledge how to end poverty, how to end
hunger
and so on.[11]
Imagine a world where there is no poverty and zero hunger; with good
health
and well-being, quality education and full gender equality everywhere. There is clean water and sanitation for everyone. Affordable and clean energy has helped to create decent work and economic growth. Prosperity
is
fueled by investments in industry, innovation and infrastructure, which helped to reduce inequalities. Living in sustainable cities and communities, and responsible consumption and production are healing our world. Climate action has capped the warming of the planet, and life
below
water is flourishing, and there is abundant diverse life on land. There
is
peace and justice through strong institutions, and long term partnerships for the goals have been built.[12]
In the coming weeks I continue to have talks with people to get an “open access knowledge sharing project related to the Sustainable Development Goals that uses Wikipedia as a tool” or Wiki loves SDGs project started
and
launched. People willing to get involved, please contact me through
private
message.
Next week will start a strategy sprint in Tunis, with members of working groups present, the board of the WMF, chiefs of the WMF office and some people of WMDE to finalize the recommendations for Wikimedia 2030. Have a look at the SDGs and think about what you can do for the SDGs, and not
what
the SDGs can do for you.
Regards,
Ad Huikeshoven
[1] https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania (Thank you,
Wittylama)
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2019_Keynote_address_%E2%8...
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission [5] https://www.sdgnederland.nl/sdg-moonshot/ [6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
[8]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
[9]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
[10]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
[11]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Learning_and_Evaluation/Logic_models