When conflict escalates overseas, its effects reach directly into Australian university classrooms, offices and communities. Students managing fear for family in a war zone. Staff from affected communities absorbing their students’ grief while carrying their own. Domestic students with forced migration backgrounds — invisible in university data systems, but acutely present in their pain.
Australian universities are among the most diverse in the world. At any given time, a conflict somewhere is personally affecting members of your community. The question is not whether your institution will face this. It’s whether you’ll be ready when it does.
About the guidelines
Refugee Education Australia has developed Supporting Students and Staff During Times of War and Conflict: Guidelines for Australian Universities — a practical, trauma-informed framework that any Australian university can adopt, adapt and activate.
The guidelines were developed in collaboration with STARTTS, the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA), the Forum of Australian Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma (FASSTT), and sector partners with deep expertise in refugee and forced migration support.
They are designed to be applicable across all conflicts — not triggered only when a particular nationality makes headlines — and cover domestic and international students at all levels of study, as well as academic and professional staff.
What the guidelines cover
Rapid response checklist: A practical checklist for the first 72 hours when conflict escalates, so institutions can move quickly and with confidence.
Know your community: Guidance on identifying affected students and staff — including those with forced migration backgrounds who may be invisible in university data systems.
Academic flexibility without bureaucratic burden: Automatic extensions, semester pause options, and deferred assessment — without placing the burden of proof on students at their most vulnerable.
Material and financial support: Advice on emergency funds, housing support, laptop loans, on-campus employment and advocacy points for universities.
Wellbeing and trauma-aware responses: Recommendations for culturally responsive counselling, trauma-informed staff training, curriculum review and the creation of community spaces for affected cohorts.
Communicating with care and consistency: How to issue genuine messages of solidarity, maintain consistent messaging across the institution, and respond equitably across all conflicts.
Supporting staff: Guidance on how to recognise the cultural load carried by multilingual and bicultural staff, minimising vicarious trauma, and offering meaningful workload adjustments.
Australian referral pathways A curated directory of wellbeing, legal and advocacy services.
Who are these guidelines for?
WHO IS THIS FOR?
These guidelines are for anyone in an Australian university or tertiary institution who plays a role in supporting students and staff — from executive leaders and student services teams to academic staff, HR, and multicultural and international student offices. They are relevant across the full institution: not just during moments of acute crisis, but as a foundation for building the kind of standing capacity that means the next conflict — wherever it occurs, and whichever communities it affects — does not catch your university unprepared.
Want to do more?
Downloading the guidelines is a start. But the universities best placed to support students from forced migration backgrounds are those that have built their capacity before a crisis hits — through ongoing professional development, sector connection and access to expert guidance.
REA’s institutional membership gives your university exactly that.
Member universities receive direct access to REA’s expertise, tailored professional development for staff, priority access to new resources and research, and a voice in national advocacy — including REA’s campaign for a National Refugee Education Framework that would establish consistent, rights-based support for students from forced migration backgrounds across the sector.
Become a member of Refugee Education Australia.