The ongoing wars and conflicts around the world are not distant events for Australian universities. They reach into classrooms, laboratories, and campuses through the lives of students and staff who carry the weight of displacement, loss, and uncertainty. Many have family members in harm’s way. Some are themselves recent arrivals from conflict zones. All of them need to know that their university sees them, understands them, and is ready to respond.
Refugee Education Australia has developed these guidelines to help tertiary institutions respond with clarity, compassion, and consistency when war and conflict affect their communities.
About the guidelines
These guidelines provide a practical framework for universities, TAFEs, and other tertiary providers to support students and staff affected by war and conflict. They draw on the lived experience of refugee students, the expertise of practitioners across the sector, and the research base on trauma-informed education.
They are designed to be adaptable — each institution has its own context, capacity, and community — but the underlying principles are consistent: respond quickly, respond with care, and respond in ways that preserve dignity and academic progress.
What the guidelines cover
The guidelines are organised around eight areas of action that institutions can take when conflict affects their community:
- Rapid response checklist — the immediate steps to take in the first days and weeks after a conflict breaks out or escalates.
- Know your community — identifying who among your students and staff may be affected, and understanding their needs without making assumptions.
- Academic flexibility — extensions, deferrals, alternative assessments, and other measures that preserve academic progress while acknowledging the realities of displacement and distress.
- Material and financial support — emergency grants, food assistance, accommodation support, and pathways to longer-term financial help.
- Wellbeing and trauma-aware responses — counselling, peer support, and creating environments where affected students and staff feel safe to seek help.
- Communicating with care and consistency — how institutions can acknowledge events publicly and privately without causing further harm.
- Supporting staff — because academic and professional staff are also affected, and they need support to support others.
- Australian referral pathways — the services, organisations, and resources available across Australia that institutions can connect their communities to.
Who are these guidelines for?
These guidelines are written for anyone in a tertiary institution whose work intersects with students and staff affected by war and conflict. This includes senior leaders, student support teams, academic staff, wellbeing and counselling services, equity and diversity teams, international student offices, and communications staff.
They are also relevant for student associations, peer support groups, and community organisations working alongside universities to support refugee and conflict-affected students.
Want to do more?
Refugee Education Australia works with tertiary institutions across the country to build their capacity to support refugee and conflict-affected students and staff. We offer training, consultancy, peer learning through our Community of Practice, and ongoing access to resources and expertise.
If your institution wants to go further — to embed this work into your long-term strategy and join a national network of practitioners committed to refugee education — we’d love to hear from you.