The government’s decision to halt visas for students from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan (UK puts emergency brake on study visas for four countries’ nationals, 3 March) risks shutting out talent, experience and leadership that will strengthen and stabilise countries around the world.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh was just six years old when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan. She came to the Blavatnik School of Government in 2019 after founding the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, providing quality education for Afghan girls. At the Blavatnik School, she worked with classmates to map 130 million girls out of school across the world and design policies to accelerate their access to education. This work highlights the role of UK universities as hubs for solutions to global challenges.
Shabana is just one of the inspiring students from these countries who have walked through our doors. Fatima Bashir was a dentist in Sudan who wanted to influence wider health outcomes. She now works for Gavi, the global alliance for vaccines.
Thu Thu Aung, a Pulitzer prize‑winning journalist from Myanmar, is now the editor in chief of Frontier Myanmar, an award-winning news magazine. Our UK alumni say they learned lessons in resilience, governance and innovation from their classmates that no textbook could replicate.
This year, our master of public policy students include those who have committed to run for office within five years of finishing, as well as Britons working in local government or the civil service. They are among the 76% of our students receiving full scholarships; 11% receive some funding.
All are committed to public service and, with classmates from 63 countries, they learn from many places about how to do better. We work very hard to raise funding for scholarships and we are dismayed that our scholarships dedicated to future leaders from Sudan and Myanmar will now lie fallow.
We believe that all countries benefit from learning together about how to achieve stability, peace and prosperity, and that we should not retreat from that.
Prof Ngaire Woods
Founding dean, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University
• I write to express our concern and dismay about the government’s statement. It declared that visas will not be issued for students from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan on account of what it calls widespread abuse, namely students from these countries lodging asylum claims.
The UK and Sudan have a long, deep, mutually beneficial history of educational ties and exchange, dating back to colonial times. Maintaining this relationship could not be more important than in the present circumstances. The war that erupted in Sudan almost three years ago has devastated the country’s education sector. Millions of Sudanese children, youth, and young people are facing an uncertain educational future, making them and the country ill-prepared for the task of post-conflict reconstruction. Offering British education for Sudanese students, rather than cutting it off, should therefore be a policy imperative at a time of utmost need.
Effectively banning students from studying in the UK is a discriminatory and disproportionate response to the 120 Sudanese students who reportedly claimed asylum last year out of more than 4 million Sudanese refugees worldwide.
The Society for the Study of the Sudans calls for the lifting of the visa ban for Sudanese students. At the very least, the UK should provide visas for students on schemes such as Chevening and university scholarships.
Aziz Magid
Chairperson, Society for the Study of the Sudans UK
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