IR: It’s a solidarity and aid organisation of Norwegian students and academics, so we are student led and we give development aid for higher education. We cooperate with 40 different organisations in Latin America and southern Africa and Asia, and we also do political advocacy in Norway and information work for higher education and for student solidarity.

“Universities should be inclusive and non-discriminatory zones”

The PIE: What are some of the projects that SAIH is working on?

IR: We cooperate with different organisations that work with higher education. Academic freedom is one part of it – for example, we cooperate with the student union in Colombia that has been working for free education and for more student rights, and also the pupils’ organisations in Colombia that have been working a lot against the military recruitment of students and spreading information about conscientious objection.

One of the other topics we work with is LGBT rights and women’s rights, so that universities should be inclusive and non-discriminatory zones, and then we have information campaigns around these topics in Norway. And the Students at Risk scheme was one of our campaigns back in 2011 and 2012.

The PIE: So how did Students At Risk start?

IR: For a long time we’ve worked with student organisations from other countries who have experienced violence and threats and imprisonment and attacks to academic freedom, and we felt that Norway should do more to protect and support these students. An idea that arose was a programme that would give student activists that have been threatened because of their work – and many of them are expelled from university – the opportunity to come and finalise their studies in Norway.

“The programme gives student activists that have been threatened the opportunity to finalise their studies in Norway”

The thought is that with an academic degree and an international network you can stand stronger in your fight for justice and for human rights and democracy, so that was the idea that we had and we wanted it to be a government funded and government run programme.

The PIE: How many students have come through the programme so far?

IR: In 2015 there were nine students and this year, eight students have arrived.

The PIE: Where do the students at risk come from?

IR: All of them come from countries that are official recipients of Norwegian development aid, from African countries, Middle Eastern countries and also from the ‘stan countries. One of the requirements is that they need to have an English qualification so that they can study in English in Norway, which means there are none from Latin American countries right now because it is a problem that many Latin Americas students, they don’t have very good English knowledge.

The PIE: Do you think that in the future it could be extended to provide English tuition as well or is that too big of a project to take on?

“Imagine if Spain had a Students at Risk programme: they could take in a lot of students form Latin America”

IR: Right now our approach is to instead work towards other European countries because imagine if Spain had a Students at Risk programme: they could take in a lot of students from Latin America. Or France could take in students from all the francophone countries. So that is more our approach right now.

The PIE: What kind of situations are the students coming from?

IR: All of them have worked with some type of human rights issue or have been part of an organisation that works politically in some way, and because of that they are threatened.

There is one student from Kenya, there were elections in 2013 in Kenya and his university was used as a place where people were going to vote and where the ballots were counted. A few weeks after the elections, the students discovered ballots in there that weren’t counted and they suspected that there was fraud in the elections and they were demonstrating against that. There were huge demonstrations and he was one of the most prominent persons there. After that he was expelled from the university because they said he was spreading a bad reputation of the university.

Another story is a student from Swaziland who has been active working for democracy in and being part of the Student Union in Swaziland, and because of that he was charged with terrorism and imprisoned and subjected to torture. And there are very many strong stories about journalist students that were imprisoned and subjected to torture, about one activist who worked against female genital mutilation in Gambia and was imprisoned.

The PIE: How much funding do students get to support them?

IR: The students receive a scholarship, it is not big, it is just enough so that they are able to study and live in Norway.

The PIE: What were some of the challenges of getting it set up?

IR: When you want something to be government-run, it demands that you get them on board and it involves a little bit of money – it is not necessarily easy. Together with the National Union of Students in Norway (NSO), we worked up towards the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and also we got support from university directors from around Norway.

“It was a push from the whole university movement in Norway”

I think that one of the things that made it come true was that the leadership side back then, when they received comments from the ministries they were sceptical towards, they adjusted the idea a little bit. And they were also not attacking the ministries or lobbying against them, but trying to get cooperation towards a common goal. I think that was very important. It was a push from the whole university movement in Norway; when there is big push from civil society it is easier for the ministries to take the initiative.

The PIE: So this is just in the pilot phase at the moment, but what are you hoping will happen once the pilot is over?

IR: The programme is going to be evaluated this Spring 2017 and we hope that after that it will be a permanent scheme, so we are already in contact with different politicians in parliament. We know that one of the political parties has in their party programme before the next elections that they want to make it permanent.

The PIE: Are you working with similar organisations in different countries at the moment?

IR: Actually we don’t know of any organisation that is similar to SAIH, because SAIH is sort of the solidarity branch of the Norwegian student movement, so we are an aid organisation but we are based in the higher education community. But we try to work with national student unions in other countries, and then of course there are scholar organisations like Scholars at Risk and we try to work with them.