Briefing: Belarusian Students in Exile – Challenges and Solutions for Advocacy

ESU, in collaboration with the exiled Belarusian national students’ union BSA has prepared this briefing to inform about the problems of Belarusian students who were forced to leave Belarus and now live and study in exile in Europe. In addition, the document proposes possible actions to support Belarusian students in the European Higher Education Area, as well as tips for advocacy on national and local levels.

Three major problems to be highlighted:

• A decree by Lukashenka requires that students can only access identity documents in person in Belarus, putting them at risk of imprisonment. A lack of alternative ID documents issued by European countries or those documents not being sufficient to enrol in higher education results in students loosing access to education due to loss of study visa and residency permits.
• The same decree also applies to education related documents. As HEIs in Belarus keep school certificates and entry certificates to prevent students from enrolling in more than one study programme and as digital platforms to obtain transcripts of records are not common, students need to travel to Belarus to obtain these documents, putting them at risk and complicates apostilling processes (i.e. the confirmation of the authenticity of a public document).
• High school graduates currently face the problem that Belarusian authorities are delaying the apostilling prcoesses purposefully resulting in the missing of deadlines for applications to European universities as they cannot provide the needed documents.

For all three aspects solutions are proposed within the briefing document, including flexbility in admission rules, alternative recognition processes and alternative ID documents which qualify also for enrolment in higher education to be issues by countries of stay.

Updated version from 24.06.2024