São Paulo – Foreigners seeking to revalidate their graduate diplomas face several bureaucratic barriers in Brazil, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported. Difficulties include high fees charged by some universities, the high costs to translate documents, and trouble presenting all the documents required.
Since 2016, UNHCR signed a partnership with Compassiva, a non-profit organization (NGO), to help refugees revalidate their diploma. The process rules were determined by a decree by the Ministry of Education in 2016. By August 2019, the organization filed 181 processes for the refugees’ graduate diploma gotten in their home country to be valid in Brazil. Out of those, 34 have already been accepted, while 15 were denied. Most of them (116) still wait for analysis and 16 were dismissed.
Most of the requests are from people who left Syria or Palestine (55%) and Venezuelans (24%). The institution that received most of the processes was Fluminense Federal University at 86 cases, 17 having been revalidated and 13 rejected. Rio de Janeiro Federal University received 23 processes and revalidated 8 of them. Campinas State University received 19 requests, having approved three.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
