Sudanese students accuse UK of ‘punishment’ after visas refused

“I felt like I was being punished just because I was Sudanese,” said a student who was refused a visa to the UK Independent.

Duaa Abdallah, 26, was forced to flee after her home in Khartoum was destroyed in April 2023 due to fighting between two factions of the Sudanese army, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

Ms. Abdullah, who witnessed all of her family’s belongings being stolen due to the war, thought that education was “the one thing no one could take away from her.” But he says he was “proved wrong by Shabana Mahmood’s sudden and deeply unfair decision.”

Earlier this year, Home Affairs Minister Ms Mahmood imposed an “emergency brake” on immigration by banning students from Sudan, Afghanistan, Cameroon and Myanmar due to a rise in legal asylum claims from those countries.

As a result of the ban, Ms Abdullah is now unable to apply for a UK visa and accept an offer to study Neuroscience and Public Health at the University of Liverpool.

Ms Abdallah said the Home Office decision “punished” genuine students and “denied” their right to education after Sudan endured a brutal war for the past four years.

‘A right denied’

Ms Abdallah had studied for seven terms at medical school before her university in Wad Madni was taken over by RSF.

The family was forced to move to a rural village with no electricity and no access to clean drinking water. According to the Cross-Border Institute, studying in Sudan poses significant challenges due to the limited national grid, which provides only 35 percent of the population with access to electricity.

“During this time I became seriously ill; I contracted malaria four times and contracted typhoid fever,” Ms. Abdallah said.

After months of displacement, uncertainty and lack of access to medicine, his family managed to escape to Egypt.

However, her family, the landlords of many apartment buildings in Sudan, lost their main source of income, so Ms. Abdullah had to become the sole financial support of her family. There he had difficulty finding work as a refugee.

As a result, he decided to take a master’s scholarship in England because he could not afford the tuition fees in Egypt. “I realized that education was the only way I could support both my family and my country,” he said.

He had just finished a study session for the University of Liverpool qualifying exams when he saw the news that the emergency brake plans had been thwarted; this decision left him “really devastated”.

“I had a constant headache for three days after hearing about this discriminatory decision and being denied the education that Britain has always stood for. I do not want special treatment; all I want is to be seen as a student who has worked hard to get to this point,” he said.

Despite misconceptions that all international students want to stay in the UK, he said: “My priority is to go back to Sudan and help build my country.” He hoped to use the knowledge he gained to rebuild his home country’s healthcare and contribute to global neuroscience research to help combat infectious diseases and disorders in endemic areas.

‘A forgotten crisis’

Fatima Osman*, 26, has interrupted her education several times due to the political and security crises Sudan has faced in recent years.

Ms. Osman stated that Sudan is often referred to as the “forgotten crisis” and said: Independent He described how he experienced a “feeling of helplessness and demoralization” because he was “stuck in the middle” of the conflict.

The expected graduation date for a medical degree in Sudan was three years ago, but between the 2019 uprising, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war, universities have experienced constant closures and instability.

Moreover, schools in Sudan are not safe from being caught in the middle of war, as seen in the drone attack that killed 17 girls in the country on March 11.

Many universities have been closed due to safety concerns, and students are forced to travel long distances, often for hours through dangerous areas, to reach the few exam centers that remain open. Entire groups of students missed the opportunity to take university qualification exams.

“Education represents stability, opportunity and the possibility of rebuilding. For many Sudanese students, it is about the ability to continue learning as our own institutions collapse due to war,” Ms. Osman said.

Receiving an offer to study a master’s degree in International Health and Tropical Medicine at Oxford University “felt like a rare moment of hope” for Ms Osman. His aim was to later return to Sudan with the knowledge he gained from the course. “As a first-generation medical doctor, I am the first in my family to attend full-fledged college, and I feel it is my responsibility to give back,” he said.

However, after the ban, he can no longer apply for a student visa to the UK. “When I first heard about the decision to suspend student visas for Sudanese citizens, I was truly heartbroken,” he said.

Sudanese student visas accounted for just six per cent (5,869 people) of the total 100,625 people seeking 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 the entire student body.

“Decisions affecting the future of thousands of young people must be based on proportionality, fairness and the full context behind the statistics.

A Home Office government spokesman said: “Study routes are being widely abused, creating a backdoor into seeking asylum in this country. That’s why we’re taking unprecedented action to suspend routes from four countries.”

“While we remain committed to expanding safe and legal pathways for those fleeing persecution and welcoming the brightest talent in a fair and managed manner, we cannot allow exceptions to scour routes to prevent further abuse of our immigration system.

*Names have been changed to protect identities