International Relations

Our International Relations colleagues are closely involved in diplomacy activities with the Belgian and Flemish governments, foreign embassies located here, Belgian embassies across the world, and, last but not least, our international alumni. Our activities include meetings with foreign embassies in Belgium and their representatives, be it for joint projects, working with their students at our university, or participating in cultural activities organised on campus (e.g. thematic days) or in partnership with VUB.

VUB has two Strategic International Partnerships (SIPs) in place. One is with the University of Western Cape in South Africa, and the other with the Universidad Central ‘Marta Abreu’ de Las Villas (UCLV), based in Santa Clara, Cuba. The main criteria for a SIP is interdisciplinarity, where three disciplines (minimum) are needed as part of a larger cooperation with universities (including research, education and mobility). The idea behind a SIP is to broad the cooperation adcross the universities even more, and to get more VUB colleagues from across various disciplines involved, leading to more interdisciplinarity, by matching science to the real world, to industry, to society. 

• More on the UCLV SIP in this article
• More on the two SIPs in this news item

International collaboration has in recent years been the focus of greater ethical and legal attention. On the one hand, the current geopolitical situation has led to more attention to possible military applications of research results. On the other hand, there has been more attention to the role of non-state actors in promoting human rights, or at least preventing human rights violations. 

Internationalisation is becoming more and more important and is reflected, among other things, in staff and student exchanges, jointly organised education programmes, contributions to capacity building in the South, international networking, clustering of research capacity and cross-border research collaboration, collaboration in tech transfer, etc. Respect for human rights is inherent to universities’ social role. Guidelines for human rights policy have been agreed upon by the rectors of the five Flemish universities in 2019. 

The VUB is committed to ensuring that its activities respect legal and ethical obligations. This procedure is intended to help the VUB’s researchers and administrators identify possible ethical and legal issues that may arise from their international collaborations. The procedure consists of the following elements:

• A definition of the scope of the procedure
• A screening procedure for checking projects

It is essential to complete the procedure accurately and in good time to ensure that projects can proceed smoothly. The check consists of two simple stages: 

1. VUB researchers and administrators are asked to assess whether their international collaboration activities involve ethical or legal obligations, particularly with regard to human rights and/or possible military applications (dual use). 
2. If this is the case, or if there is any uncertainty, the second stage is to ask advice from the relevant legal department of VUB 
   (see step 2). 

Please note that if the advice given by the ECDMM is not followed and or incorporated,  no contracts or other relevant documents concerning the project will be signed by VUB. 

The complete text is available online (for VUB staff & researchers only)