Somerville and Sanctuary

A Place of Greater Safety

In February 2021, Somerville and Mansfield Colleges were recognised jointly as the first University Colleges of Sanctuary in the UK.

Becoming a College of Sanctuary sees Somerville reiterate its founding promise to include the excluded, updating it for a world in which forced migration and displacement threaten the lives of millions. In particular, we are eager to redress the drastic imbalance whereby only 1% of those from sanctuary-seeking backgrounds enter higher education. Our new, fully-funded Sanctuary Scholarships will support this endeavour, and you can read more about our second Sanctuary Scholar, Asif Salarzai, below.

Being a College of Sanctuary also means embedding the principles of welcome and safety throughout Somerville, so that we are known as a place of sanctuary and support. It is thanks to this recognition that people such as Dr Anwar Masoud were able to find us, and receive the help Somerville is only too willing to provide.

ASIF SALARZAI,

Somerville’s Sanctuary Scholar 2021

Somerville is delighted to welcome Asif Salarzai (2021, History and Economics) as its second Sanctuary Scholar. Asif came to the UK as a refugee aged 14 having previously never attended school. Now, thanks to his extraordinary tenacity and a chance encounter with a virtual Somerville event featuring Lord Alf Dubs, Asif will shortly begin a degree in History and Economics at Somerville. Read our full profile of Asif in the forthcoming Report for Donors.

Anwar’s Story

In 2019, through the intervention of the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) and the Scholar Rescue Fund, the Yemeni neuropathologist Dr Anwar Masoud was offered a place in the research group led by Somerville’s Tutorial Fellow in Medicine, Professor Daniel Anthony. Two years later, Anwar and his family finally managed to escape Yemen and come to Oxford.

It was like a dream, opening that letter. In my hands I held an offer to go and work at Oxford University. I knew straight away I had to forget everything, drop everything, to try and get there.

At the time, we were living in northern Yemen. I was working two jobs, one at the government university and another at a private university – a job I was lucky to find after they stopped paying government salaries in 2016. Without that extra income, it was all too easy to get swept away by stress or not having enough money to buy food or medicine.

Of course, once I received the invitation from CARA, the next big challenge was getting here. In the end it took two years. The greatest obstacle was that my family did not have current passports, and travelling to Aden or Cairo to renew them was not safe.

Time passed and things got worse. Every night the air strikes fell around our home. Every night I told my children the same story to help them sleep: ‘Don’t worry, it’s only a wedding. People are just celebrating by setting off fireworks.’ But my children were getting older and I knew that, any day, they might figure out the truth.

For years, my wife and I tried to shield them from the reality of the situation. We never let them to watch anything but the kids’ channels on TV, in case they saw the news. Instead we would watch Tom and Jerry or a favourite adaptation of Les Misérables. On Saturdays, we used to watch Liverpool games if they were showing.

But, inside, I was getting desperate. I was afraid CARA would withdraw their offer because I had asked them to wait too many times. I was afraid I would get in trouble for speaking to people outside the country, even though I always used VPN for my calls.

Eventually, I reached out to a former government minister, Rafat Al-Akhali, who now works at the Blavatnik School of Government here in Oxford.

Dr Anwar Masoud and his family

Despite hardly knowing me, he made a great effort to help me obtain new passports for my family – a kindness for which I will always be grateful.

With new hope, we crossed the border and spent five weeks in Cairo waiting for our papers. One day, we were told everything was ready and a flight was booked to the UK.

How can I ever convey to you the feeling when we landed safely or the gratitude I feel today? All I can say is that my family now has a future, where before there was none. I can focus on my research with Daniel. My wife can learn English. I can walk my children to school each morning and, thanks to the kindness of Somerville in finding us a home, they have a place to sleep through the night.

As for me, I still find it hard to sleep, thinking of my friends and colleagues back in Yemen. That is why I am so grateful to Oxford and Somerville for supporting the idea of sanctuary – it is a comfort to know that, soon, others might benefit as I have while we wait and hope for the violence to end.

“Now I can walk my children to school and they have a place to sleep through the night.”