Students’ experiences in conflicts and wars in Ukraine, Palestine, and Myanmar

• In Event: Making the Invisible Visible: Ethical and Decolonial Futures in Global Higher Education from Non-Western Contexts, Perspectives, and Practices

Proposal

Wars and conflicts happen in many parts of the world (Stolen & Stensaker, n.d). The International Crisis Group made a list of ten conflicts areas required to be monitored in 2024 and these areas include Gaza, Wider Middle East War, Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, Ethiopia, The Sahel, Haiti, Armenia-Azerbaijan, and U.S.-China (Ero & Atwood, 2024). Conflicts and wars have caused many people's lives to have suffered ranging from fleeing from their home and family to dying (Ero & Atwood, 2024). Higher education (HE) is also one of the sectors affected, and it encounters barriers projected by conflicts and wars directly and indirectly (Milton & Barakat, 2016). Research has explored how wars and conflict impacted different kinds of higher education sectors such as infrastructure damage, teaching and learning, faculty and students (Barakat, 2016; Lavrysh et al., 2022; Milton & Barakat, 2016). Some have explored students’ experiences post-war contexts and students' experience in the midst of war and conflict is underexplored (Htut et al., 2023). In addition, research on students' experiences in conflict areas is especially done in a single country focused, leaving the gaps in understanding broader contexts. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to examine comparatively and comprehensively students’ experiences in conflict areas in Ukraine, Palestine, and Myanmar using the existing literature. The paper particularly chooses these three countries due to (1) the need for immediate humanitarian aid (2) long lasting political conflict and their distinct geographical contexts and (3) unique external and internal political actors. The paper first describes the background information of countries such as Ukraine, Palestine, and Myanmar. Then it provides analysis on students’ academic and psychological experiences in conflicts and wars based on existing literature. The notions of this analysis reveals that conflicts and wars negatively impact students. Even though there is a chance to continue online education in all three countries, inequity still exists for those students based on one’s socio-economic backgrounds and resources available. These barriers include technology literacy especially found among Palestinian and Myanmar students, and access to resources such as lack of internet connectivity, electricity, electronic devices found in these three countries. Moreover, the variety of academic disruptions that occurred vary by country. In addition, the diverse political and geographical contexts (i.e., internal vs external) create different academic and psychological experiences for students. The most common types of mental health found among Ukrainian, Palestinian and Myanmar students are depression and anxiety during the conflicts and wars. In addition, different forms of resilience facilitated by cultural, religious, and political forces reflect students’ ability to adapt, cope and overcome challenges in conflicts and wars. Finally, this paper concludes by calling for an action to support students equitably in war and conflict areas.

Authors

• Stephen Ai San Nap, State University of New York at Albany

• Aik Paung Seinn, Michigan State University