The Qatari girl, Jawaher Al-Mir, was always fascinated by France, its language and culture, so she announced to her parents her desire to study abroad, and chose the Sorbonne University.
However, she was forced to leave the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi to Paris.
Because of the Saudi-Emirati blockade imposed on Qatar.
And
in the
report
of the
magazine "Le Point" (Le Point) French, says Jewels (26 years) "I wanted to be the
first person in my family continue his studies outside Qatar, I wanted to realize something different for myself and for
my country. I have heard a
lot about the
Sorbonne."
In 2015, Jawaher and her family found Paris not suitable;
Because France at the time was under the shock of the Charlie Hebdo bombings, and therefore the choice fell on the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi, which is culturally and geographically closest to Qatar, to register the girl.
The Sorbonne University had opened a branch in the Emirates in 2006 after an agreement between the prestigious French institution and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Abu Dhabi, to receive nearly a thousand students, most of them from the Gulf.
This gives them the advantage of intensive courses offered by French teachers.
The Qatari student who joined the university in 2016 to pursue a double degree in sociology and philosophy, for a wage of 40,000 euros per class, recalls, “We were 4 students per class during the guided lessons, something like private lessons, everything was prepared to facilitate our understanding, the pace was slower Than in France. "
550 Qatari students
Jawaher lives in an apartment which she rents all year round in Abu Dhabi, however she is close to her family, who visits her on most holidays;
Because Qatar is only one hour away from the UAE by plane, as the writer says.
During her week off in Doha on the occasion of the month of Ramadan, the girl learned on the morning of June 5, 2017 that her country has become besieged by its Gulf neighbors, hundreds of Qatari citizens have been expelled, and Jawaher Al-Mir, along with nearly 550 Qatari students registered in one of the blockading countries, was forced to cut short their education.
The still very emotional young woman remembers hearing the news on TV, "At first I didn't take it seriously because I thought it was only about governments, not the people ... I didn't imagine for a moment that it could reach me."
However, confidence and calm suddenly turn into anxiety, when the girl finds that her friends and colleagues are deleting her one by one from Facebook, fearing a new Emirati law punishing "sympathy" with Qatar, and after two weeks she received an email from the Sorbonne University in Abu Dhabi giving her 20 days to transfer Her file to the Sorbonne University in Paris, without any compensation.
"I was shocked and didn't know what to do because I know that all my things are still in my apartment in Abu Dhabi, and I couldn't contact anyone there. I had to hire a transport company and give them instructions via Skype. It was a real psychological shock," she says.
Jawaher Al-Mir faced many difficulties in her first year in Paris (Al-Jazeera)
Hard Parisian life
This time, the seriousness of the situation prompted the parents of Jawaher Al-Mir not to oppose her departure to France - as the writer says - and the girl arrived in France in August 2017, taking advantage of a scholarship granted to her by the authorities, which is an enviable opportunity compared to the dozens of her citizens who were forced to return. To their country;
But her troubles did not end there.
Initially, Jawaher Al Mir stayed in a hotel.
But renting a room with its accessories was impossible without a bank account, and her personal belongings that were still stuck in the Charles de Gaulle airport customs could not be obtained without a fixed address. “The sudden forced relocation to Paris was the most difficult thing in my life. I had to leave school in Paris,” she says. Midday to go to the bank and try to open an account. I didn't have any friends, nobody in college knew me, and even the teachers didn't know anything about my situation. "
After this transfer, the student’s good academic results collapsed - as the writer says - from an average of 13 to 8 out of 20 in Paris.
But the young woman did not accept defeat, and insisted that she not waste her year and prove to herself and her family that she can do it on her own, she says.
Climb up the slope
Sorbonne University (island)
Over the months, by doing extra homework, the Qatari woman was able to climb the slope and finally benefited from a better education at the University of Paris. "We might be 300 in the runway, the quality of the courses was really higher than that in Abu Dhabi," she says.
In the end, the student's efforts paid off and she won her academic year in Spring 2018 with a miracle.
However, the taste of this "victory" is still bitter, she says. "I was shocked that I was denied an education because of my nationality. It is unacceptable to use the prestigious name of the French Sorbonne University, to fulfill a political agenda."
United Nations Forum
Keen to publish her story, Jawaher Al-Mir has used public relations agencies.
This allowed her to testify on the platform of the European Parliament in February 2019, and on the platform of the United Nations Human Rights Council the following month, and said that she was subjected to Emirati insults on social networks. “The UAE has repeatedly claimed that nothing happened to the Qatari students during the blockade, but I I was evidence to the contrary, and the question I asked was why were we deprived of education? And I have not received a response to it yet. "
In this context, Qatar brought the matter to the International Court of Justice in 2018 and concluded from it that its students can continue their studies in the Emirates. Despite this, the highest court in the United Nations rejected Doha’s request to convict Abu Dhabi for "racial discrimination on the basis of nationality."
After three and a half years of having to leave the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi in a hurry, Jawaher Al-Mir welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations on January 5 between Qatar and the blockading countries.
The student, who has not yet finished her studies, said, "Peace is beneficial to all these countries, and it is very appropriate to see all these families together again. This reconciliation should not make us forget everything that the Qatari students had to go through because I do not want anything to happen." It happened again one day. "