This year, two Afghans and two Afghan women who had their studies interrupted by the rise of the fundamentalist Taliban regime were given the chance to restart their university life at a leading institution in Brazil.
Students in undergraduate and graduate courses at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), they are the first participants in a new project at the institution aimed at academics at risk.
The Academic Refuge program, launched on April 27, offers humanitarian assistance to students and researchers affected by conflict or persecution in their countries of origin.
In addition to offering funding to these foreigners through scholarships, the program also supports them throughout their migration journey, from obtaining a visa and moving to Brazil to Portuguese classes on arrival, accommodation, food, medical assistance and other stages of their and their families’ integration.
“It is an institutional reception program that articulates several fronts of the university and takes advantage of the structure we already have to support them: hospital, psychological care, housing, restaurants”, explains professor Ana Carolina Maciel, president of the Sergio Vieira de Mello Chair. at Unicamp.
The chair, existing in 28 Brazilian institutions and linked to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is focused on research, extension and teaching linked to the theme of refuge. One of its programs is special admission to universities for refugees, which, in the case of Unicamp, has 15 places available.
The current project, however, requires a series of requirements, such as the person already being in Brazil, with approved refugee status, mastering Portuguese and having interrupted a higher education course in the country of origin.
“We are making these rules more flexible and creating a more active project, which accepts stateless persons, asylum seekers, people who have not necessarily left a course in their country of origin”, says Maciel. “We live in the era of forced displacement and we have to equip ourselves to better receive the people affected by these humanitarian crises.”
The project began to be drafted in 2021, after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan. This year, the conflict in Ukraine, which has already led to an exodus of more than 5 million people, has reinforced the need for such a project. “Every day we receive messages from people from Russia and Ukraine asking for help, opportunities, asylum”, says Maciel.
The first four members were incorporated into the program by an emergency task force, but the project will have a public notice to organize the entry of the next participants.
Not only people from conflict regions are eligible, but also those affected by natural disasters, situations of food insecurity, climate change, authoritarian regimes and embarrassment for ethnic, religious, political and gender reasons.
The program will already begin to offer scholarships through a new initiative by Fapesp (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo) that will allocate R$ 20 million, in total, to researchers from conflicted countries such as Syria, Ukraine, Russia and Afghanistan. The aid has the modalities of postdoctoral or visiting researchers, that is, it is aimed at more experienced academics. Applications (at this link) for the selection are open until August 30th.
Unicamp is now looking for partnerships so that the Academic Refuge can also serve other undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students.
Currently, the university has 480 foreign undergraduate students and 908 graduate students from 71 countries. Of these, 15 are refugees.
According to Unicamp’s dean, Antônio José de Almeida Meirelles, the theme of refuge “is at the origin of Unicamp”. Founded in 1966, during the military dictatorship, the university had in its original faculty some Brazilians who had come from exile in other countries. From the 1970s onwards, it also hosted researchers who were political asylum seekers from the Argentine dictatorship.
More recently, the institution has hosted Haitian students affected by the January 2010 earthquake, as well as Syrians who fled the civil war.
He notes that the motivation for welcoming refugees is not only humanitarian but also academic. “The arrival of these talents increases our interaction with the world. They can continue their studies, gain a breath to reorganize their lives and at the same time contribute to our scientific activity and to our community”, he says.
