So my name is Habib Wardak and I'm from Afghanistan. I've started studying at the University of Bath
since September of 2021 as a Sanctuary Scholar and I'm pursuing my masters in
international relations. So Sanctuary Scholarship is a scholarship designed
for vulnerable people and specific to asylum seekers, refugees, who run away from conflicts,
civil wars, and persecution and come to the United Kingdom where they have aspirations
to further continue with their education but they do not have access to student finances,
student loans. The basic motive behind Sanctuary Scholarship is to have them on board
and have them study so that they could further excel in their future academic or professional
aspirations. So I came to the United Kingdom in October of 2020 and I started living in Scotland.
As an asylum seeker it's very, very difficult to integrate into the job market,
professional environment in the United Kingdom or for that matter of fact in any other country. One
of the best ways to do it is through education. Obviously I couldn't do that because I was an
asylum seeker so you have problems with your finances, you have problems with your admissions,
you have problems, and it's all about survival to be very honest, because you have no public funds,
you're basically on your own. And then I heard about the University of Bath, it's prestige, about
the course and the module, and then the Sanctuary Scholarship. It's a very rigorous process,
it has a robust process where you have to apply, you need to have an unconditional offer and then
you have to have interviews for your Sanctuary Scholarship, and then finally it happened that you
finally could very well integrate into the society in the United Kingdom. As for your aspirations,
and this is what Sanctuary Scholarship does to you, so it takes care of your fees,
it takes care of your living expenses, it just basically paves that path for you where you cannot
only continue but thrive and excel. So quite a few things, number one is Bath itself. It's a very,
very diverse town where you have diversity, you have a lot of tourists, a lot of students
coming from different parts of the world, so there is diversity not just in terms of skin colour,
diversity in terms of views as well which is very important in our course international relations.
So you have people from different backgrounds, from China, from Japan, southeast Asia, Latin
America, Europe, Middle East. The other thing was the course itself. The faculty, the experience
and the backgrounds that they come from, professors who teaches you models who are experts
in politics of Europe coming from Europe, you have people from south Asia who are teaching you, Latin
American professors, so it's a very, very diverse background, academic backgrounds of people who are
teaching you and then your students from different parts of the world, and this is where you exchange
ideas and that is what makes this very, very fascinating and interesting. So when you come to a
different country and then you come to a different city you'll run into all sorts of problems,
accommodation, your finances, maybe at times you might require the mental health support. When we
talk about Sanctuary Scholarship the University of Bath as a family, an institution all together, all
support has been available at all these fronts, so you have the the financial support which is
basically the backbone of ensuring that you can study here and not worry about your finance. The
University of Bath, Ambrose and his team has been extremely helpful in finding me an accommodation
where I and my family could reside. Extending help in terms of the mental health support because you
come from a from a war zone, from conflict. Last but not least is every now and then
you know you're trying to adjust yourself into a new life over here and you may lag behind,
your personal tutor is there who is always there to help you and make sure you don't fall behind,
you don't lag behind, so it's been, in a way, it has been an overall a complete package of sort of
help and assistance on all fronts. So the course is designed in a way where it basically
prepares you to get into real world and you know there's the career services which helps you find
jobs in terms of finding the right job in the right industry where you're trained, where you
prefer to work, and that is exactly what I've been doing, but my primary motive is to further
pursue my academic career, where I would want to pursue my PhD, so that is going to be my priority
number one. Where eventually when I complete my doctoral studies and then so I could go back
to academia and contribute back and give back to the society in terms of my knowledge of conflict,
my knowledge of wars, and then coupled with what I've gained at the University of Bath, teach them
for the rest of my lifetime. So my PhD proposal is again going back to my roots, Afghanistan,
but its implications could be applied to a lot of other countries who are also going through
conflict, and it's basically focusing on regime security versus human security. What we tend to do
is we tend to focus a lot on regime securities, our favourite regime,
our favourite person, how do we strengthen that, but my thesis is going to be looking at what is
going to happen if we for once forget about regime security and focus on human security.
Now I assume that this basically contributes into a prolonged civil strife, prolonged insurgency,
but if we have people who have food to eat, who have better economic conditions, that might
contribute into a positive long-term sustainable peace. Yes so you know Afghanistan, we come from a
country that has been through invincible civil strife 40 years of you know regime changes,
civil wars, and brutalities, invincible bloodshed, it's you know you're born and brought up there,
you know it's always very, very close to you and the fact that this research becomes very
important to me is that if I think that my studies or my analysis could help Afghans and the broader
international community have a bit of peace that's going to be a lifetime achievement.