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InZone is a programme of the University of Geneva that explores, develops and tests innovative approaches to higher education in communities affected by conflict and humanitarian crises, especially refugees and displaced people. Its ultimate goal is to empower people on the move and host-community by giving them more decision-making power through accessing higher education, equipping them with knowledge and skills while fostering leadership, confidence, and professional pathways.

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Why refugee higher education?

1,488 learners reached in 2025 across Jordan, Kenya, Niger and Bangladesh. Expanding access to higher education, one learner at a time.

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Why refugee higher education?

Global displacement has reached an all-time high, with over 122.6 million people forcibly displaced due to conflict, climate change, and economic instability. Among them, millions face significant barriers to accessing higher education (HE), despite the myriad of benefits it has been found to offer displaced people, including enhanced skills and job opportunities needed for all durable solutions (host-country integration, third-country resettlement, and repatriation), social inclusion into their host communities, and long term resilience and hope for the future, among many others. Currently, only 7% of refugees worldwide are enrolled in higher education, which is a direct result of structural challenges such as high costs, legal restrictions on access to education, HE administrative barriers, and inflexible programme formats and structures that fail to adapt to the specific needs of displaced learners.

Existing higher education initiatives for displaced populations, ranging from scholarships to online or blended courses, have made significant progress in expanding access to quality learning opportunities through innovative design and implementation strategies. While scholarship programmes such as UNHCR's DAFI initiative and many others have provided much needed opportunities to thousands of displaced learners, they still reach only a fraction of those in need. Online and blended learning models have connected millions of students worldwide to higher education, and several programmes have successfully designed innovative ways to offer crucial elements, such as personalised academic and psychosocial support, peer and group learning, and relevant methods and content (e.g. culturally, linguistically, and trauma-informed), among others. InZone is one of the most prominent of those.

 

OUR VISION

The focus of InZone’s work in the coming years will be on consolidating its activities in three domains:

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By investing in education, research and innovation, InZone aims to expand opportunities for learning in communities affected by conflict and crisis. Through partnerships with universities, humanitarian organisations and local actors, we seek to reach new learners, strengthen educational pathways and extend our work to new contexts and countries.

 

 

STUDENT STATISTICS (Annual Report 2025)

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GLOBAL UNIVERSITY ACADEMY

UNIGE through its InZone programme has been pioneering in the development of quality higher education for refugees and displaced people, a well recognised programme by now.

Eager to expand its reach and broaden its impact, InZone is among the founders and a global lead with University of Oslo of the Global University Academy, a virtual university for refugees strong of more than twenty academic and humanitarian partners already.

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Annual Report 2025

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