Ukraine at Ilisimatusarfik

The Russian invasion goes against all of our democratic values and morals, along with our fundamental believe in a peaceful co-existence between all.

Ilisimatusarfik strongly condemns the Russian war effort along with the support of the country of Belarus - this involves, among other things, a united condemnation through the Network of Universities of Small Countries and Territories (read the statement here), which consists of the following institutions:

• University of Akureyri
• University of Andorra
• University of the Faroe Islands
• University of Gibraltar
• University of Greenland
• University of Liechtenstein
• University of Malta
• Mediterranean University of Montenegro
• University of Montenegro
• University of Nicosia
• University of San Marino

A written condemnation is one thing - what you do yourself is quite another.

At the moment, our university has no direct partnership agreements in Ukraine - but through a collaboration between different parties in Greenland and the Ukraine, we are at the moment looking into the possibility of receiving one guest lecturer and two guest students from Ukraine.

If successful, then this will be from the beginning of April this year.

Undoubtedly, certain challenges will present themselves - for example, the fact that our spring semester is well underway at the point. But from our perspective, these are but small and we remain in the belief that we can solve these challenges together.

As a higher educational institution, our ability to provide and support people whose daily lives consist of a dreadful war is limited.

Despite this recognition, what we can offer is a means of momentarily escape from the horrors that continue to occur in Ukraine - horrors, that none of us can perhaps truly grasp in their entirety.

This could, we hope, provide for them a time of safety and relief - relief from a place wherein days consisting of normalcy has been lost for some time.

This is for us a good place to start - and the least we can do.

We are all humans; divided across the globe by countries, cultures, religions etc.

But we still take the stand that humanism can help us come together - even in the darkest of days.