Tomorrow the High Court will begin hearing the Minister for Justice’s defence against judicial review challenges brought by four Gazan students who were refused visas despite having university places and scholarship funding to come to Ireland.
We, academics across Ireland, and Sadaka – the Ireland-Palestine Alliance are calling on the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs to intervene with Minister Jim O’Callaghan immediately, to ensure that the decisions on the applications of all affected students are re-made properly and in time for evacuation to occur.
If students are to be included in the next internationally organised evacuation from Gaza in late October, their visas need to be granted before 15 October.
We understand there to be approximately 115 Gazan students whose visa applications have been denied.
Last year’s arrangements by the Department of Foreign Affairs to evacuate students from Gaza who had received university and private donor support to continue their education were a source of widespread pride throughout Ireland. We have been privileged to teach and get to know these students: they have contributed immensely to our universities and communities while performing very strongly in their studies.
Whereas 13% of long-stay study visa applications from Palestine were refused last year, this year’s refusal rate has skyrocketed to a shocking 83%. The difference seems to be that the Minister for Justice has taken over the decision-making, although the Department of Foreign Affairs still sends the correspondence.
This refusal of student visas en masse, when assurances regarding paperwork had been given and evacuation arrangements had been commenced by the Department of Foreign Affairs makes a mockery of the Taoiseach’s speech to the UN General Assembly last month and the efforts of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
We call on the Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs to bring the Minister for Justice to the table, and to resolve this appalling injustice for all students concerned before the 15 October deadline to secure evacuation.
We also call on all university administrations to keep the students’ places and funding open for them, for this academic year and where necessary for the academic year commencing September 2027, while they appeal.
We remind the Government that Ireland, as a state party to the 1948 Genocide Convention, is obliged to “employ all means reasonably available” to prevent genocide so far as possible, according to the International Court of Justice. Ireland has recognised that Israel is perpetrating genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Genocide has been found to be occurring by the United Nations Human Rights Council-appointed Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (‘International Commission’). The International Commission has pointed to the systematic destruction of the education system as a constitutive aspect of the genocide in Gaza.
Ireland can, and therefore must, intervene to prevent this aspect of the genocide in Gaza by protecting its people’s educational opportunity in ways that are eminently possible to do.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
While the International Court of Justice has not yet issued its final determination in the case of South Africa v. Israel, the United Nations Human Rights Council-appointed Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (‘International Commission’) found in its report published on 16 September 2025 that ‘the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.’
The International Commission found that ‘since at least 26 January 2024, when the International Court of Justice ordered its first provisional measures, all States Parties to the Genocide Convention, and all other States too, have been on notice of a serious risk that genocide was being or would be committed. As such, the duty to prevent genocide was triggered due to the actual or constructive knowledge of the immediate plausibility that genocide was being or was about to be committed.’
The International Commission’s September 2025 report summarises the evidence of Israel ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’—which is an act of genocide according to Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention. As evidence of this genocidal act, the International Commission points to, among other things, Israel’s destruction of structures and land essential to Palestinians including Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s education system.
In an earlier report dedicated to attacks against educational facilities and religious and cultural sites, published in May 2025, the International Commission noted that Israel’s targeting, destruction and damaging of higher education facilities in Gaza had affected approximately 87,000 university students. More than 57 university buildings had been completely destroyed as of 25 March 2025 and over 190 university academic staff were reported killed. The International Commission observed: ‘The destruction of the education system in Gaza is expected to harm Palestinians for generations to come, with consequent challenges in economic development, work and social abilities’ and ‘The extensive physical destruction of Gaza, the dismantling of its education system and attacks on cultural and religious sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory generally not only affect Palestinians at present but also jeopardize the future of the Palestinian people, including their right to self-determination’.
That the systematic destruction of Gaza’s third level education sector is a constitutive aspect of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has been recognised also by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 and by many leading international law scholars.
The term ‘scholasticide’ has been used widely to describe this systematic destruction.
Therefore, to the extent of its reasonable ability, as a matter of preventing genocide pursuant to its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention Ireland must act to protect the educational opportunity of Gaza’s population.
Further establishing the Irish Government’s positive obligations towards students who are experiencing an ongoing situation of genocide, including scholasticide, in Gaza, Ireland is a signatory since 2015 to the Safe Schools Declaration – ‘an intergovernmental political commitment to protect students, teachers, schools and universities from the worst effects of armed conflict’ agreed by 121 UN Member States. The Safe Schools Declaration commits the Irish Government to (among other things):
‘Develop, adopt and promote “conflict-sensitive” approaches to education in international humanitarian and development programmes, and at a national level where relevant’, and
‘Seek to ensure the continuation of education during armed conflict, support the re-establishment of educational facilities and, where in a position to do so, provide and facilitate international cooperation and assistance to programmes working to prevent or respond to attacks on education, including for the implementation of this declaration’.