For any event or group in the tech sector in the US or Western Europe, having an Equality & Diversity policy and a way to raise complaints and enforceable rules

For any event or group in the tech sector in the US or Western Europe, having an Equality & Diversity policy and a way to raise complaints and enforceable rules to ban discrimination are basically table stakes. The PyCon community in particular should know this since "donglegate"; whatever one thinks of that incident, the PyCon community in the "west" has since made quite clear that being an inclusive and welcoming environment is as much one of their core values as having python rather than perl as their preferred programming language. The author of the open letter says that adopting a "human rights plan" (quotes in the original) would "pose a significant legal and personal risk to [the] organisers". Assuming this is true, we have a situation with no easy answer. I think most people in the python community would agree that an event in a country where making a pro-equality commitment would not pose significant risks to the organisers, absolutely must make such a commitment. If the choice is between events in Tanzania with no pro-equality statement, and no events in Tanzania at all, I agree that it's a question worth discussing. Should the PyCon policy be "your event must have an equality policy unless you have a good reason not to?"