In today’s world full of conflict and war, it seems an estimated of 13 million children to be out of school in conflict-affected areas, this is as per UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics and the Global Education Monitoring Report. Additionally, conflict, the climate emergency, and the hunger crisis have pushed education systems to the brink. Combined, this means that 224 million school-aged children now have their education severely disrupted by crises. When these young learners, or displaced children, or refugees, or migrants are accommodated back in the a classroom, they are usually labeled for the convenience of the school, state or educational systems. Like the flower in my painting, the same but not the same. I completed the painting sometime back thinking of the flower that is forgotten or is not part of the bouquet and hence named it ‘The Blues’.
We all experience this blue feeling sometime or the other, but what happens if it becomes a constant state of mind because of the education systems or policies. Education often speaks the language of global mindedness. We celebrate mobility, intercultural understanding, multilingualism and learning across borders. We encourage young people to see themselves as part of a shared humanity. And yet, there is a painful contradiction at the heart of this aspiration. How do we include children who have had to cross borders not as a choice?
For some learners, crossing borders is presented as an educational opportunity: a semester abroad, a university pathway, an international qualification, a passport to global citizenship. For others, crossing borders is an act of survival. It may mean fleeing conflict, war, violence, persecution, climate disruption or political instability. For these learners, education is not simply interrupted. It usually becomes inaccessible altogether.
I read a recent UNESCO reporting that reminded me of the scale of this inequity. Refugee participation in higher education has increased, but remains profoundly below global participation rates. Behind this gap are not only questions of affordability or language proficiency, but also missing documents, unrecognised qualifications, disrupted schooling, restrictive admissions systems, limited information, systemic bureaucracy, and institutional processes that were never designed for displaced learners.
This should give all of us in international education pause. Think about the systems we create, is access being masked as equity? Realizing the harsh reality of our diverse classrooms where there are more and more displaced or refugee or migrant children.
Equity cannot be reduced to opening a door and hoping someone can walk through it. Equity asks whether the building itself was designed with everyone in mind. The solution is in the design.
Access is only the beginning
When we discuss inclusion, we often begin with access: who is admitted, who receives a scholarship, who is offered a seat in a classroom. These questions matter deeply. But access alone does not guarantee belonging, participation or success.
A learner who has escaped conflict or war or has been displaced from their country of origin may enter an institution to be included in education and still feel invisible. Their previous learning may be treated with suspicion because it does not fit familiar records or systems. Their linguistic abilities may be viewed as a deficit rather than an intellectual resource. Their experiences may be invited into the classroom only when the topic is war, displacement or trauma.
This is not representation. It is conditional acceptance. Ironically the word conditional acceptance is also a norm in higher education.
True representation means that refugee and displaced learners are not positioned merely as recipients of support, stories of resilience, or subjects for others to study. They must be recognized as thinkers, contributors, knowledge holders and co-creators of learning spaces. Most importantly they are here as we left them nowhere to be.
International education has an important responsibility here. If our purpose is truly to develop learners who can engage thoughtfully with complexity, then we cannot build programmes that treat some forms of knowledge as universal and others as peripheral, traditional or indigenous, minimizing their significance. Categories should exist to treat them at par not as lesser than.
Representation in pedagogy, who is expected to speak, learn and belong?
Pedagogy is rarely neutral. Every classroom makes assumptions about participation, confidence, language, prior knowledge and what counts as success.
In many multicultural classrooms, we reward the learner who speaks quickly, debates confidently, makes eye contact, asks questions publicly and articulates ideas in the dominant language of instruction, mostly English. These may be valuable skills, but they are not the only indicators of intellectual engagement. How does the pedagogy ensure intellectual indicators that are diverse and not common.
A learner who has experienced displacement may need time before contributing in a large group. They may express understanding through writing, visual representation, collaboration, observation, careful reflection or even silence. They may carry linguistic and cultural knowledge that expands the discussion but does not emerge through conventional participation structures. How do we create learning spaces for psychological safety of these learners?
An equitable pedagogy creates multiple pathways for learning and expression. This can only happen if we build systems that recognize and acknowledge the world around them and the changing nomenclature of our classrooms.
This might mean offering varied ways to demonstrate understanding, building in structured reflection before discussion, valuing multilingual thinking, using collaborative rather than exclusively competitive learning structures, and ensuring that classroom dialogue does not demand personal disclosure as the price of participation. It also means being careful not to make refugee or displaced learners representatives of an entire country, conflict or community. No student should have to relive their displacement in order to make a lesson feel authentic for others. They should not be used as case studies.
The question for educators is not, “How can we include displaced or conflict impacted student stories in our curriculum?” It is, “How can our learning environments recognize the full humanity, expertise and agency of displaced or conflict impacted learners?” I avoid using the term ‘refugee’ as I feel it misinterprets the lived experiences of the learner.
Representation in epistemology, whose knowledge counts?
International education must also confront a deeper question: whose knowledge counts?
When knowledge is presented as if it has only one centre, learners from the margins are expected to enter someone else’s intellectual world rather than seeing themselves as participants in creating it. A more equitable curriculum does not simply add diverse names to a reading list. It asks broader questions: Whose voices are missing from this unit?Which histories have been treated as central, and which have been treated as supplementary? What knowledge has been carried through memory, language, community practice or lived experience but excluded because it does not fit conventional pedagogy?
For conflict impacted or displaced learners, this matters profoundly. Displacement does not erase knowledge. A student may arrive without reports or transcripts but still bring deep knowledge of languages, local economies, cultural systems, environmental realities, migration, political histories and resilience. If our education system cannot recognize such knowledge, it is not just failing individual learners. It is limiting itself.
Representation in implementation, where do values become real?
Equity is often strongest in vision statements and weakest in implementation. We may speak beautifully about inclusion while maintaining admissions procedures that assume every learner has uninterrupted schooling, official transcripts, stable internet access, financial guarantees, standardized test scores and familiarity with complex bureaucratic systems.
This is where international education policies must move from aspiration to action. Where do we see the values in action?
Institutions can begin by reviewing whether their admissions, assessment and support systems and policies unintentionally exclude displaced learners. Flexible recognition of prior learning, competency-based assessments, provisional admissions, alternative evidence of qualifications and clearer guidance can make a difference. But the work does not end there.
Students also need practical support and they need staff who understand that trauma-informed practice is not about lowering expectations. It is about creating conditions in which high expectations are possible. These learners need to see themselves in the curriculum, in institutional leadership, in student voice structures and in the decisions made about their learning.
Most importantly, they need to be asked what would make education more accessible and meaningful for them. Not consulted after decisions have already been made. Not invited to share a story for a brochure. Not admitted to raise the school diversity profile. Asked as partners in design.
Internationalism as responsibility
This is the urgent moment for international education to reconsider what internationalism really means. It cannot only mean the ability of some learners to travel easily between countries, institutions and opportunities. It must also mean responsibility towards those for whom borders have become barriers. And responsibility of who created these conditions for displacing young learners.
The promise of international education is that every learner will be recognized for who they are within the journey they are already navigating, not for how they fit in their new environment.This is a question of rights, dignity and intellectual justice.
And for all of us working in international education, it is a reminder that representation must be visible not only in the faces in our classrooms, but in the knowledge we teach, the pedagogies we use and the systems we choose to build. Equity has to begin with access, but it only becomes real when learners are able to arrive, belong, contribute and shape education for their present and future, together.