Syria crisis: should universities help?

By Nick Petford. Vice-chancellor Nick Petford writes from the Kurdistan camp where refugees have lost an education as well as their homes. As dusk approaches the temperature fall is dramatic. The small groups of residents still outside turn their backs on the cold and return home. Except of course they don't. Home is not here, among the muddy UNHCR-branded tents and water trucks but somewhere all together more hostile. There are now more than 250,000 Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq, itself no stranger to suffering. Remember Saddam Hussein's chemical warfare against the inhabitants of Halajba? They were Kurds, the same people now offering sanctuary to their desperate neighbours. More...