The advisory committee ‘Assessment Framework for Risks Related to Armed Conflicts and Human Rights in International Collaborations’ presented its evaluation report, containing various recommendations, to the Executive Board last Tuesday after a carefully conducted pilot phase.
The independent advisory committee, appointed by the Executive Board, consists of thirteen members from all faculties, with diverse expertise in areas such as ethics, human rights, and international cooperation. The composition of the committee reflects the diversity within VU and the academic community. At the request of the Executive Board and the Deans, the committee refined and tested the assessment framework using various cases to gain insight into how the process works in practice, how it can be effectively applied, and how collaborations can be assessed effectively. Based on the experiences from the pilot phase, the committee concludes that a case-based approach is the most suitable for this issue, as opposed to an approach that evaluates entire countries. This method allows for consideration of the situation in a country, the position of the collaboration partner, the content of the collaboration, and its alignment with the university’s goals and principles when formulating advice. One area for improvement in the process is the need to define some of the framework’s principles more precisely.
The Executive Board thanks the advisory committee for its dedication, analysis, and evaluation. The Board will review the evaluation report and case-based recommendations and, after discussing the report within Inter-Board Consultative Platform, will provide a response in April. This response will also be incorporated into a revised version of the assessment framework. The assessment framework is expected to be made publicly available in mid-April, at which point VU students and staff will have the opportunity to provide suggestions before it is finalized.