On 23 February 2019, the Assembly of the “European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation” (EIUC), based in Venice and consisting of 38 universities within the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU), decided to amend its Statute and also change the name of this association to “Global Campus of Human Rights”. This was the last and decisive step in a longer process of transforming this network of universities from a European into a global one. Professor Asim Mujkić, co-director of the Global Campus South East Europe-European regional MA Programme in Democracy and Human Rights in SEE, coordinated by the University of Sarajevo and the University of Bologna, represented our University at this extraordinary meeting.
EIUC was created in 2002 by 15 European universities as a non-profit association under Italian law, for the main purpose of jointly organizing the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation (EMA), which has been funded, since its inception in 1997, by the EU. In addition to the EMA programme, EIUC has also developed a variety of other activities, such as training seminars, summer schools, conferences, joint research project, and outreach activities.
Parallel to EMA, similar Master programmes, which were also funded by the EU, have been developed in other regions. In 2012, the EU requested EIUC to start a process of coordinating these regional Master programmes and to transform them into a global network of universities responsible for post-graduate education in the field of human rights and democracy. EIUC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the coordinating universities of the other regional Master programmes, and we developed a number of joint activities, such as an annual International Conference, a Global Classroom that brings together professors and students of the different regions to discuss global issues of common concern, e-learning activities and an exchange of students and professors. As from 2017, EIUC has signed a single annual contract with the EU and has also gradually assumed the main financial responsibility and quality assurance for the various activities of this global network of roughly 100 universities, which we decided to call the “Global Campus of Human Rights”.
Now the time had come to change also the organisational basis by opening membership of EIUC to our non-European partner universities and transforming EIUC formally into a global non-profit association. This also means that the European Board of Administrators will soon be replaced by a Global Campus Council, in which the coordinating universities of the regional Master programmes (the National University of San Martin in Buenos Aires, University of Pretoria, Mahidol University in Bangkok, Saint Joseph University in Beirut, Yerevan State University, as well as the Universities of Sarajevo and Bologna) will have a permanent seat. Together, the Global Campus of Human Rights is the largest institution worldwide offering post-graduate education in the field of human rights and democracy.
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