The introduction of a Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) framework at Maastricht University has been anticipated since last spring. The current Israel-Hamas war and subsequent protests, including those on UM premises, prompted the Executive Board to develop a policy instrument. Its purpose is to provide a sound basis for assessing whether partner institutions – not just in the Middle East but across the globe – have clean hands. To coordinate this process, an overarching body will be established: the UM Sensitive Partnerships Committee. The committee will include the chairs of three subcommittees, each dedicated to one of three assessment domains: human rights, knowledge security, and fossil/sensitive industries.
Aggression
But what will determine whether a partner institution is blacklisted? UM adheres to the International Criminal Court’s definitions of international crimes: aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. If there is sufficient evidence indicating that a government is guilty of such crimes, UM will evaluate its partner institutions (institutions that have signed contracts with the Executive Board or a Faculty Board) in that country. For individual collaborations, such as joint publications, smaller projects or guest lectures, university expects staff members to evaluate the associated risks themselves and seek advice from the new committee if needed.
A partner institution will not be held responsible for international crimes or serious violations of human rights committed by its government if the institution is not involved in those violations. However, the Executive Board notes that an institution can be held responsible for the extent to which it contributes to such violations itself – for example, if there is evidence that academic knowledge or technology is being used for military purposes. Key sources for assessment will include judgments by international, regional or national courts of justice, UN applicable sources, reports by NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, academic publications, and embassy information.
And what happens if the verdict is that an institution does not have clean hands? Can a collaboration simply be terminated? If it is governed by Dutch law, UM can seek to have the contract annulled by a Dutch court. If not, the outcome depends on the partner institution’s willingness to cooperate. The Executive Board has already decided that all new institutional partnership contracts will include a human rights clause.
Tilburg
Israel will be one of the first three cases to be evaluated in 2025, which will serve as a pilot year. Several other universities in the Netherlands have already reached their own decisions about collaborations with partners in Israel. Erasmus University in Rotterdam, for example, will not enter into any new collaborations with Israeli and Palestinian universities for the time being. The Rotterdam Executive Board decided that last September.
At Tilburg University, the Executive Board was advised by a special committee in early December not to send any more students or staff to Israel. According to their university magazine Univers, the committee found there is a significant risk “that Israeli partner institutions are involved in the war in Gaza. It also concluded that these institutions do not sufficiently distance themselves from human rights violations or fail to explicitly condemn them, partly because of an apparent lack of academic freedom [in Israel].”