Third party collaborations: conflict zones and human rights violations
Expansion of the Policy Framework
The intense violence in the Middle East and the discussions this has sparked within our community show that our current policy framework for assessing international collaborations provides insufficient guidance when collaborating in conflict situations. Therefore, we are expanding this assessment in consultation with our academic community.
Recommendations
A broad academic working group has gathered constructive and meaningful input to enhance the assessment framework for international cooperation. Through roundtable discussions, a town hall meeting, and the Denk Mee platform, numerous responses from the UvA community have been received. Based on this input, the working group made eleven recommendations to the Executive Board and the deans shortly before the summer of 2024.
Next Steps
It became clear that it is important to proceed carefully when tightening the assessment. At the same time, there is a call for urgent cases to be addressed quickly. This means that expedited advice will be sought for three cases, so that decisions can be made promptly.
In the meantime, work continues on developing the eleven recommendations into a renewed assessment method, with the aim of completing the supplement to the policy framework before the end of the year.
Committee composition & process
The Advisory Committee on Collaboration with Third Parties is working on additions to the assessment framework for collaboration with third parties. To this end, four colleagues with specific expertise have been added to the team in recent months. The expanded committee is now working on updates to the assessment framework, based on the 11 recommendations made previously. The aim is to discuss the updated framework with the Executive Board at the end of this year. The expanded committee is also working on advice about three urgent cases that cannot wait until the updated framework is fully ready.
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Composition
The existing committee, which is chaired by Aart Nederveen (Amsterdam UMC), has temporarily recruited a number of extra members. Click here for the composition of the existing committee.
The committee now also has the following temporary members:
- Yvonne Donders, professor of International Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, director of the Amsterdam Graduate School of Law and member of the UN Human Rights Committee.
- Carlos Reijnen, associate professor of East European Studies and director of the College for Humanities.
- Ugur Üngör, professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies (UvA and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies).
- Jan de Boer, professor of Theoretical Physics, member of the Executive Board of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and chair of NWO’s Science domain.
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Updating findings
Based on the findings of the ad hoc committee before the summer, the expanded committee has been working since the summer to improve the assessment framework on the basis of the following two tracks:
- The incorporation of the 11 recommendations of the ad hoc working group from before the summer into the framework for collaboration with third parties. The previous recommendations about the fossil fuel industry will be incorporated as well, resulting in a framework with broader applicability.
- The expanded committee is also assessing three cases that cannot wait until the updated framework is fully ready. These cases relate specifically to collaborative ventures with partners in ‘sensitive countries’. In two cases, the contract term is coming to an end in the very near future, the other case involves sanctions by the EU:
- Student Exchange Agreement with Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- MoU with China Scholarship Council on PhD training
- Student exchange with universities in Hungary as part of the Erasmus programme