War-Affected Sudanese Students Stranded as UK Halts Study Visas

Ismail Shikheldin was a step closer to escaping Sudan’s civil war to build a future abroad when he made it to the interview stage of the UK government’s Chevening Scholarship. His hope was dashed when he received an email in March, informing him that his application had been withdrawn, about two weeks before his interview. ‘I was in shock because this is something I have been working on for a long time,’ Shikheldin told FairPlanet. 

Nearly three years into the war that killed his mother, the 32-year-old humanitarian worker has witnessed how food insecurity leaves displaced families going hungry for days and children malnourished. This motivated him to pursue a course in agriculture for his master’s. He secured admission offers from five British universities, with one terminating his offer and others putting them on hold.

‘It was something really big for me, and it’s going to take a very long time to find other opportunities,’ Shikheldin said. 

These decisions came in the wake of a March 4 order by the UK Home Office, announcing a new migration policy that restricts study visas for nationals of four countries, including Sudan, describing it as a measure to tackle visa abuse. 

Futures on hold

Hundreds of thousands have died since Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023, with more than 15 million people displaced within and outside the country, including people whose academic and career dreams were interrupted. 

For many of them, like Baraa Malik, a dentist now living as a refugee in Egypt, studying abroad represents their only viable route forward. ‘I can’t have a future here,’ Malik, 27, said. 

By the end of 2025, Egypt hosted more than a million Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers, many of whom suffer discriminatory policies and structural barriers that make it difficult for them to acquire visas, work, or access housing. 

With these restrictive policies, Malik now works as a telemarketing agent. She was looking forward to returning to her field by beginning her master’s in public health. She had secured admission offers from Imperial College London, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  

‘I don't know where to go from here. All my efforts and late nights, everything was just leading me towards studying in the UK. Now I feel like someone who has been fighting for something their whole life only to find out they can’t get it,’ she said. 

For some students, visa restrictions leave them at a crossroads - whether to return to their war-torn country or remain in places where their futures are equally uncertain. 

In January, Sudan’s military government announced its return to Khartoum, the country’s capital, after nearly two years of the area being under the control of the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group. The group has been accused of war crimes, including genocide, with the United Arab Emirates alleged to be funding it through weapons supply in exchange for smuggled gold. For many, the army’s recapture of Khartoum signalled hope of peace and rebuilding. However, conflict continues to intensify, making it difficult for people to return home or for students to return to their classrooms. 

Despite this, the government plans to reopen the University of Khartoum soon. Raghda Ali, a 21-year-old Sudanese refugee in Oman, was an engineering student at the university before the war broke out, just six months into her studies. 

‘They want us to go back, but it’s not safe. It’s a 50:50 situation where you could survive, or you could get killed,’ Ali told FairPlanet. 

She recently applied to two British universities, hoping to continue her studies, but both schools have withdrawn her applications. ‘I contacted more than 20 organisations to secure financial support for my IELTS exam, only to be met with this disappointment,’ Ali said. 

Questioning the policy

In its announcement, the UK Home Office stated that the policy targets Sudan, Cameroon, Myanmar, and Afghanistan because asylum claims from their nationals increased by more than 470 per cent in the last five years. 

However, Jeff Crisp, a research fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, told FairPlanet that the visa restrictions are more about politics and less about asylum.

‘The two right-wing parties, the Conservative Party and Reform UK Party, are using the asylum and migration issue as a stick to beat the government with and to build their own electoral support,’ Crisp said. 

He highlighted that this puts the government under pressure to show that it is working to control migration and asylum, hence the decision to clamp down on people arriving in the country through student visas. 

‘The government is trying to demonstrate to the electorate that it is taking the issue of asylum and migration very seriously, and that it's prepared to take very tough measures to reduce the numbers,’ Crisp said. 

Between 2021 and 2025, asylum claims from people who entered the UK through legal routes tripled. The Home Office stated that applications from Sudanese students grew by over 330 per cent in the same period. 

Experts have challenged these figures, arguing that they do not justify the restrictions. 

Between 2023, when Sudan’s war began, and 2025, the UK received 292,816 asylum claims, with Sudan accounting for 13,944 of them. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Bangladesh, and Eritrea recorded the top five highest claims, before Sudan. ‘It’s like Sudanese students are taking the fall for people coming into the UK from every country,’ Ali said.

Crisp warned that the policy could chase away international students, pointing out that universities rely on them for financial stability, as they pay significantly higher tuition than home students. ‘If foreign students are treated this way, it's going to act as a major disincentive,’ he said. 

‘The UK needs Immigrants’

For Patrick Taran, President of the Global Migration Policy Associates based in Geneva, Switzerland, the new policy reflects a deeper contradiction in how the UK thinks about immigration. ‘The rhetoric and the justification being provided by the government are somewhere between absurd and insane,’ he said. 

Taran explained that immigrants, including students, play a vital role in providing skills and talent that the country increasingly needs, but can’t always get from its native population. 

Citing decreasing birth rates in the UK, he noted that fewer people are being born who will eventually enter the labour market, and replace those who retire. 

With a significant share of the labour market being of immigrant origin, he argued that the policy contradicts the country's own economic reality by framing the very individuals whose skills the country increasingly depends on as abusers.

‘The UK needs immigrants to maintain its workforce. If the labour force doesn't have the skills it needs, which it's only going to get, in part through immigration, it's going to end up being increasingly unviable and unsustainable,’ he noted. 

On the human cost of the policy, Taran highlighted that the policy signals that the UK is getting tougher on migration and on the treatment of foreigners, ethnic minorities, and people of colour, in a way that’s abusive of their rights and ability to find dignified work. 

‘We are talking about people leaving situations that are disastrous in terms of even being able to have some security for their very right to life, and to say somehow that going to another country on whatever visa and then applying for asylum is somehow abuse–to me, that stretches the imagination,’ Taran said. 

Although the Home Office has said the policy is temporary with no given timeframe, every day counts for the war-affected students caught in the middle of the restriction: ‘We hope something is done soon, because futures are at stake,’ Shikheldin said. 

For Crisp, the solution to managing migration and asylum lies not in blanket bans, but in a more humane approach to border management that recognises the realities of people affected by conflict and displacement. ‘I think the government should not impose these bans. It should accept that if people come from countries where persecution and armed conflict are taking place, then some of them may seek to stay longer than was originally intended, and regard that as part of their humanitarian obligation to provide people with a place of safety.’