“I felt that I was being punished solely for being from Sudan”, a student denied a visa to the UK has told The Independent.
Duaa Abdallah, 26, was forced to flee after her home in Khartoum was destroyed in April 2023, due to the conflict between two factions of Sudan’s military, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
After witnessing all her family’s possessions stolen by the war, Ms Abdallah thought education was “the only thing no one could ever take away” from her. But she says she was “proven wrong by the sudden and extremely unjust decision of Shabana Mahmood.”
Earlier this year the home secretary, Ms Mahmood put an “emergency brake” on migration, banning students from Sudan, Afghanistan, Cameroon and Myanmar, due to a surge in legal route asylum claims being made from those countries.
Now as a result of the ban, Ms Abdallah is unable to apply for a UK visa and take up her offer to study Neuroscience and Public Health at the University of Liverpool.
Ms Abdallah, she says the Home Office decision has “punished” genuine students and “denied a right” to their education, after Sudan has endured a brutal war over the past four years.
‘A denied right’
Ms Abdallah was seven semesters deep into medical school before her university located in Wad Madni, was taken over by the RSF.
The family were forced to relocate to a rural village with no electricity or access to safe drinking water. With the limited national grid granting only around 35 per cent of the population with access to electricity, according to the Transnational Institute, studying in Sudan poses considerable challenges.
“During that time I became severely ill – I contracted malaria four times and suffered from typhoid fever”, Ms Abdallah explained.
After months of displacement, uncertainty and lack of access to medication, her family managed to escape to Egypt.
However, her family lost their main source of income, as landlords of several apartments in Sudan, so Ms Abdallah was forced to become the sole financial support for her family. She struggled to secure a job there as an asylum seeker.
As a result she decided to pursue a master’s degree scholarship in the UK as she could not afford the tuition fees in Egypt. She said “I realised that education is the only path that will allow me to support both my family and eventually my country”.
She had just finished a study session for her proficiency exams for the University of Liverpool when she saw the news of the emergency brake plans broke – a decision which left her “truly devastated”.
“I had a continuous headache for three days after hearing this discriminatory decision and being denied education, something that the UK has always advocated for. I do not want special treatment; all I want is to be seen as a student who has worked hard to reach this point”, she said.
Despite misconceptions that all international students wish to remain in the UK, she said: “My priority is to go back to Sudan and help build my country”. She was hoping to use her gained knowledge to rebuild her home country’s healthcare and contribute to global neuroscience research to help tackle infectious diseases and disorders in endemic areas.
‘A Forgotten crisis’
Fatima Osman*, 26, has had her education repeatedly interrupted by the political and security crises Sudan has faced over recent years.
Ms Osman referenced how Sudan is often cited as the “forgotten crisis” and she told The Independent how she experienced a “sense of helplessness and demoralisation” on being “stuck in the middle” of the conflict.
Her original expected graduation date for her medical degree in Sudan was three years earlier, but between the 2019 uprising, the COVID-19 pandemic and now the ongoing war, universities have experienced continuous closures and instability.
Moreover, schools in Sudan are not safe from being caught up in the war, as demonstrated on 11 March when a drone attack in the country killed 17 girls.
Many universities have been shut down due to safety concerns and students often have to travel long distances for hours through dangerous areas to reach the few examination centres that remain open. Entire cohorts of students have missed the opportunity to sit for university-qualifying examinations.
“Education represents stability, opportunity, and the possibility of rebuilding. For many Sudanese students this about the ability to continue learning when our own institutions are collapsing because of war”, Ms Osman said.
For Ms Osman, receiving an offer to pursue an MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford “felt like a rare moment of hope”. Her goal was to then return to Sudan with the knowledge she gained from the course . “As a first generation medical doctor, I’m the first person to fully go to university in my family and I feel it is my responsibility to give back”, she said.
But now since the ban, she is unable to apply for her student visa to the UK. “When I first heard about the decision to suspend student visas for Sudanese nationals, I was honestly heartbroken”, she said.
Sudanese student visas accounted for just six per cent (5,869 people) of the total 100,625 people claiming asylum in the UK last year, according to Home Office data.
Ms Osman said: “Extremely small numbers are being used to justify a blanket policy affecting an entire group of students.
“Decisions that affect the futures of thousands of young people should be based on proportionality, fairness, and the full context behind the statistics.
A Home Office government spokesperson said: “Study routes are being widely abused, creating a back door to claim asylum into this country. That is why we are taking unprecedented action to suspend routes from four countries.
“And while we remain committed to expanding safe and legal routes to those fleeing persecution and welcoming the brightest talent in a fair and managed way, we cannot allow exceptions to study routes to prevent further abuse of our migration system.
*Names have been changed to protect identities
