APRU COMMITMENT TO ACTION

The Asia-Pacific region is at the leading edge of higher education, research and innovation. In building and sustaining world-class research universities, APRU members benefit from the flow of people around the region whether as academic researchers or students or as migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.

Not only do we gain from attracting the best intellects from many countries, we also gain deep human insights from people with a wide diversity of backgrounds and experience. This enables us to contribute strongly to our own societies with fresh understandings of ourselves, discoveries and innovations in science and technology, and collaborations across borders to solve the pressing issues confronting our region.

We understand that we have a responsibility to assist in the formation of public policies that accord with the humanitarian values of the academe and which support the mutually beneficial exchange of human talent for the betterment of our societies and the advancement of education and research.

We further understand that the neutral platform of APRU as a leading university consortium has increasing salience for pursuing multilateral initiatives in a time of rising tensions.

To this end, APRU and its members express our commitment:

to advocate migration policies which accord with international humanitarian standards and reflect our values;

to ensure our internal policies promote equity and diversity, enabling migrants to gain the full benefits of higher education and to rise to leadership of our universities;

to act collectively across the region where appropriate to engage with international and multilateral policy processes on migration; and

to further enhance collaboration for faculty and student mobility among our institutions, finding ways to continue to cooperate despite increasing obstacles.

We will do this in the interest of academic excellence and to build trust across borders for the global challenges ahead.