Cara (the Council for At-Risk Academics) is a rescue mission for academics around the world who need urgent help to escape from discrimination, persecution, violence or conflict.
Cara also supports academics who choose to work on in their home countries despite serious dangers, and higher education institutions whose work is threatened or compromised.

The Scholars At Risk network protects threatened scholars and promote academic freedom worldwide. Read Free to Think: Report of the Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Monitoring Project

The Taliban ban university lecturers from pursuing master’s or doctoral studies abroad without explicit approval from regime’s supreme leader. This new policy, coupled with a 40% salary cut, restrictions on female education, and mass resignations, has left universities in crisis. International scholarships are dwindling and those defying the ban risk losing their jobs, further isolating Afghanistan’s academic sector. Read more in the Afghanistan Times.

A needs assessment on Higher Education in Gaza by has been conducted by Swisspeace (Amani Al-Mqadma, Roland Dittli, Martina Belotti) The report highlights the huge challenges but also the resilience and potential within Gaza’s university system. At the time of the report’s writing, , 63% of the tertiary education campuses have been destroyed. Read the report.

An estimated 549,675 students and 45,400 teachers are in directly affected areas, of which 37,000 are students at the state-run Lebanese University, 52,000 are students at private universities, and 2,450 are faculty at Lebanese University, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education. Read more at University World News.

In Myanmar, three years into the national resistance to a February 2021 military coup, the country’s university student population had shrunk by 90 percent from pre-coup levels , at least partially reflecting students’ decisions to boycott the military junta’s education system, in many cases  joining either the nonviolent or armed resistance.

In Sudan, one year into a civil war that broke out in April 2023, more than 100 Sudanese universities had been severely damaged or entirely destroyed, most through intentional targeting or looting. The violence almost completely halted research and teaching.

On November 19, 2024 – marking the 1000th day since the Russia invasion of Ukraine, CARA are proud to be supporting the future of higher education in that country, with 39 Ukrainian Fellows so far this year in their Fellowship Programme and 175 in the British Academy-led Researchers at Risk scheme. Find out more about CARA’s impact in their annual report.

If you are doing work or collaborations with researchers or institutes in these and other at risk regions, please contact us if you would like your work and and initiatives shared with the DSA community.