16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

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16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the United Nations System and Host Country Agencies
150. WHO submitted requests for visas to the US Consulates eight months before the fellows
commenced their training. Given the sensitivity surrounding the issuance of visas by some
countries to certain nationalities, WHO suggested selecting more than one host country
as a back-up in case one country could not grant visas to fellows. WHO experienced visa
problems not only with fellows but with a large variety of employees holding different
types of contracts. WHO/PAHO emphasized that the issuance of visas depended to a
large extent on the individual desk officer handling a visa request, a fact that was very
difficult to alter.
151. The representative of the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs (DDA) added that
his fellows were governmental officials from Ministries of Foreign Affairs or Ministries of
Defense. DDA engaged itself right from the beginning in the visa process on behalf of the
fellows by sending the list of fellows to the respective governments of the host institutions
while seeking at the same time the assistance of the UN Visa Section in New York.
152. ITTO inquired if there was a list of visa fees for each country. Such a list would be useful
to prepare fellowship budgets and verify expenditure claims. DESA explained that such a
list did not exist since visa fees were the responsibility of the fellows and/or their governments.
It would be possible to establish such a list after CEB had approved the reimbursement
of visa fees, as recommended by previous meetings of SFOs.
153. The Secretary of the Meeting, Mr. De Tomassi, summarized the discussions and proposed
a draft recommendation along the lines expressed by the participants, namely, recalling
that the responsibility of obtaining a visa rested with the fellows while encouraging
the beneficiary governments to be more involved. He also stated the best practices
by Belgium, the United Kingdom and Italy, as recipient countries, and affirmed that
agencies should take the political situation in consideration whenever placing fellows
in a given country.
Intervention by Mr. Kevin Drury, Business Manager, Training Management Group
Governance and Development on behalf of the British Council
154. Mr. Drury mentioned that most of what applied to NUFFIC also applied to the British
Council in terms of visa request assistance, tailor-made courses, mentoring and
monitoring or advisement on placements. He then brought the issue of medical coverage
for fellows in the United Kingdom to the attention of the meeting. Coverage could
be slightly different depending on whether fellows were to be based in England, Wales,
Northern Ireland or Scotland. In general, anybody undertaking fulltime study of six
month or more was covered by the National Health Service. In Scotland fellows would
be covered despite the duration of their stay. In England and Wales they would be covered
for the entire duration of the fellowship award, provided the British Government
sponsored 35% or more of the overall training expenses of the fellows. Fellows were
able to work in the United Kingdom up to twenty hours as compared to ten hours in
the Netherlands. For the same reasons as in the Netherlands though, they were discour-