This follows previous reports that students had been affected by both the closure of the Visa Application Centre in Gaza and Israel’s control of the borders.
These students included five UCL offer holders: two students with masters offers and three incoming foundation year students.
Dr Michael Spence, UCL’s Provost, previously told the Guardian, “It is really important that we keep the life-changing opportunity of higher education open for students whose lives are being overturned by conflict.”
The government announced on 26 August that they had approved plans to evacuate nine Chevening scholars, as well as around 30 other students, to complete their visa biometric checks in a third country before their arrival in the UK.
They will be the first students who have left Gaza to study in the UK since 2023.
The decision follows months of campaigning by activists and academics pressuring the government to act to protect these students.
In a statement on Instagram, the campaign group The Gaza 40 expressed that it “welcomes recent developments regarding the UK Home Office’s response,” while warning that the government “must go beyond non-committal press statements.”
The group further pointed out that the government had not communicated with the scholars sufficiently, claiming that many scholars “were not made aware of the development directly, and discovered this through a BBC exclusive article.”
It should also be noted that the current decision to predetermine visas does not include dozens of other students in Gaza who have offers to study in the UK but do not have funded scholarships.
This article appeared in CG93
