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Decades after a key convention on academic recognition was adopted, assessing the knowledge, skills and competences of refugees is still a challenge. Helene Peterbauer looks for answers in the historical context, our digital present and several promising new initiatives.
The fair recognition of refugees’ qualifications, even in situations where these qualifications cannot be evidenced through documentation, is a key task of recognition authorities, including higher education institutions. Moreover, it is a requirement of the Lisbon Recognition Convention (LRC), which has been in force in most European countries for a quarter of a century. But are we succeeding in ensuring that refugees’ qualifications do not go to waste?
Overall, Europe is doing well on the recognition of qualifications. Earlier this year, an Erasmus+ project dedicated to supporting the implementation of the LRC published a report on the quality of academic recognition in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The report concludes that the LRC and its provisions aimed at ensuring fair and transparent recognition procedures were generally well implemented across higher education institutions in the EHEA. This is a wonderful finding, which speaks to the concerted efforts of institutions and their staff, governments and higher education stakeholders.
However, the report also highlights one important shortcoming in current practices: the recognition of refugees’ qualifications.
Based on study elements including survey responses from 193 higher education institutions across the EHEA, the report finds that the number of institutions without any special procedure for the recognition of the qualifications of refugees or people in a refugee-like situation with no or insufficient documentation is almost as high as those that report having such procedures in place. When the report authors conducted follow-up focus groups, three main reasons emerged:
1) There were not enough refugees in the country to make special recognition procedures worthwhile;
2) A ‘special procedure’ was (mis)understood and implemented as fast-track admission (typically for Ukrainian refugees) with the opportunity to provide documentary evidence at a later point; and
3) Special procedures imply an additional time investment and the institution was not sufficiently staffed to be able to afford this investment.
On the one hand, this conclusion is somewhat surprising. The LRC, which was adopted in 1997, specifically stipulates that the higher education community should ensure that the qualifications of refugees do not go to waste. The LRC’s Article VII, entitled “Recognition of qualifications held by refugees, displaced persons and persons in a refugee-like situation”, states that “[e]ach Party shall take all feasible and reasonable steps [...] to develop procedures designed to assess fairly and expeditiously whether refugees, displaced persons and persons in a refugee-like situation fulfil the relevant requirements [...], even in cases in which the qualifications obtained in one of the Parties cannot be proven through documentary evidence”.
The final part of the stipulation – “even in cases in which the qualifications […] cannot be proven through documentary evidence” – is indeed the crux of the matter. The LRC and its Article VII were written at the time of the breakup of Yugoslavia, when many European countries took in refugees whose (paper) qualifications were either irretrievably destroyed or left behind during an urgent escape from their homes. The natural consequence was that these refugees had no documentary proof of their qualifications.
As such, recognition authorities had to get creative and find other ways of confirming levels of skills, knowledge and competences. In practice, this typically translated into individualised interviews, exams and quite a bit of detective work on the side of the evaluators. This goes to show just how laborious it can be to assess someone’s qualifications without documentary.
However, since the Yugoslav Wars, several developments have greatly facilitated the recognition of refugees’ qualifications. First and foremost, digitalisation. The destruction of paper qualifications no longer equals their permanent loss, since they can generally be retrieved online. This has, for example, greatly aided the recognition of qualifications from Ukraine, a country in an advanced state of digitalisation. Ukrainian qualifications and their documentation are often readily available online and in such cases, Article VII of the LRC is not even needed.
Not all countries are as digitally advanced as Ukraine, so the qualifications of many refugees still require special procedures. These can be resource-intensive, especially in times of intensified forced migration. Yet there are several initiatives aiming to address this challenge by offering a more streamlined and systematically supported way to recognise refugees’ knowledge, skills and competences.
The European Qualifications Passport for Refugees (EQPR), for example, is a tool issued by the Council of Europe in partnership with government and recognition authorities in several European countries, as well as UNHCR. Although the ‘passport’ does not formally constitute an act of recognition, it outlines crucial information for the recognition of the refugee’s qualifications, such as their highest qualification(s) achieved, academic discipline, as well as relevant job experience and language proficiency, following an assessment conducted by an especially trained credential evaluator.
In addition, the EQUAL project has developed a freely accessible e-learning course on assessing refugees’ qualifications. Finally, the European Recognition Manual for Higher Education Institutions contains a dedicated section (21. Qualification holders without documentation) explaining how to create a background paper (i.e. a file containing information similar to the EQPR) for applicants with no or insufficient documentation of their qualification.
With many initiatives currently underway to support the recognition of refugees’ qualifications, university staff are – in theory – well equipped for this task. However, staff are also right in pointing out the resource-intensiveness of implementing such procedures. Adequate funding (including for staff training) and human resources are still needed to ensure that refugees have the full benefit of their knowledge, skills and competences as they rebuild their lives in a new country.
