Degrees in Limbo: Afghan Medical Students Challenge Expulsion from Pakistan

For Afghan medical students in Pakistan, the distance between years of study and forced departure was reduced to a 24-hour administrative deadline. Some were in their final year. After lectures, examinations, ward rounds, and clinical rotations, graduation was finally within reach. Then they were told to complete the formalities for leaving their institutions.

The orders did not follow academic failure or misconduct. They arose from a policy directed specifically at Afghan nationals. For students who had entered Pakistan through official channels and built their futures around recognized degree programs, the message was difficult to escape: their nationality could suddenly outweigh their academic standing and years of work.

A court has now interrupted that process, at least temporarily. The reprieve is important, but it does not erase the fear caused by the orders or settle whether all affected students will be allowed to complete their education. Their futures should not depend on rapidly shifting and contradictory instructions.

The Order and a Court Reprieve

On September 1, 2026, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council directed medical and dental institutions not to admit, place, transfer, or otherwise facilitate Afghan nationals during the current academic session. The council also stated that Afghan students previously enrolled in medical or dental programs were required to return to Afghanistan under prevailing policy directions.

Institutions in Punjab soon began acting on the directive. According to notices reviewed by Arab News, at least 43 Afghan students at King Edward Medical University and Fatima Jinnah Medical University, including 26 women, were ordered to complete departure formalities within 24 hours. The notices did not give students 24 hours to finish years of education; they gave institutions and students 24 hours to begin dismantling it.

Many of the affected students entered Pakistan through legitimate, government-supported pathways. Several of the students who later petitioned the court held scholarships under the Higher Education Commission’s Allama Muhammad Iqbal Scholarship Program, a fully funded initiative created for Afghan nationals. These students were admitted, registered, and educated by recognized institutions. They followed the process established for them. Applying a new restriction to students already far into their degrees punishes them for a policy change they neither caused nor could have anticipated.

On September 11, the Lahore High Court suspended the PMDC directives after petitions by 13 Afghan medical students. The court ordered that the students be allowed to continue their education, sit examinations, participate in academic activities, and return to their hostels while the case proceeds. Pakistan’s Foreign Office also said there was no blanket ban and that Afghan students enrolled in valid degree programs with valid visas could remain and complete their studies.

Those assurances are welcome, but the conflict between the PMDC letters, institutional notices, and the Foreign Office’s position has already created serious uncertainty. The court’s intervention is temporary, and the legal challenge remains pending. What students need now is a clear, durable, and nationally consistent guarantee that those already enrolled may finish their degrees without further interruption.

The Stakes for Afghan Women

For women on the affected lists, return to Afghanistan would not mean transferring to another university or resuming the same course closer to home. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where secondary and higher education is formally forbidden to girls and women. Girls are barred from school beyond the primary level, and women have been excluded from universities.

The situation worsened in December 2024, when the Taliban barred women from attending private medical institutes, closing one of their last formal routes into nursing, midwifery, and other health professions. An Afghan woman forced to leave a medical degree in Pakistan therefore has no equivalent pathway waiting for her across the border. Her education may simply stop.

That loss would extend beyond the student. UNICEF has warned that excluding girls from education will deepen Afghanistan’s shortage of qualified female doctors and midwives, limiting the care available to women and girls. Preventing Afghan women from completing medical training weakens both individual futures and a health system that urgently needs them.

This is a dimension of displacement that receives too little attention. Displacement is not only the loss of a home or familiar place. It can also mean the loss of a future that had become tangible: a degree nearly completed, a profession within reach, and the ability to contribute to a community. For these students, academic interruption could turn years of disciplined work into an unfinished qualification with no immediate route forward.

When Education Becomes Conditional

Education is recognized as a fundamental human right and a foundation for dignity, autonomy, and participation in society. Governments have authority to regulate immigration and student visas. But students already admitted through official programs are entitled to clear rules, fair procedures, and decisions that account for the reliance they placed on institutional promises.

A government may decide prospectively to change future admissions. Removing students who are already enrolled, including those close to graduation, is different. It transfers the entire cost of a political or regulatory shift onto young people who complied with the rules. For Afghan women, it also sends them toward a system that excludes them from the very education they are being forced to abandon.

The question at the center of this case is therefore larger than one directive: Can a student’s right to complete an education already begun be made conditional on nationality after years of study? If the answer is yes, displaced and foreign students everywhere learn that academic achievement offers no protection when politics changes.

What Pakistan and Its Partners Should Do

The Lahore High Court’s intervention allows Pakistan to replace confusion with a humane and workable policy. The government and PMDC should issue written, coordinated instructions confirming that Afghan students already enrolled in recognized programs and holding, or actively renewing, valid visas may complete their degrees. Universities should restore uninterrupted access to classes, clinical rotations, examinations, and hostels, and relevant authorities should process visa extensions without delays that place lawful students at risk.

Any review of a student’s immigration status should be individual, transparent, and separate from a blanket nationality-based academic exclusion. For Afghan women, decision-makers must consider the reality that return would leave them without access to formal higher or medical education. If Pakistan ultimately cannot guarantee completion, the Higher Education Commission, universities, and international education and medical bodies should help secure transfers, preserve academic credits, and prevent students from having to begin again.

Most importantly, the students must be included in decisions about their own futures. They are not entries on a compliance list. They are young people who entered Pakistan through official doors, completed years of demanding study, and prepared to serve as health professionals. They did their part. Pakistan should ensure that they are allowed to finish what its institutions enabled them to begin.

Ruqia Qudos is a Fellow at Displaced International, an Afghan researcher and human rights advocate pursuing an MS in Information Security. She also serves as General Secretary of the International Afghan Students’ Association.