16 December 2022
Bilbao Campus
From mid-2021, the University has been advising the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), which is the focal point responsible for supporting Member States on asylum, international protection and reception conditions. The migration crisis in Europe, also known as the migration crisis in the Mediterranean - or the refugee crisis in Europe - meant that in 2015 (and subsequent years) the European Union had to train professionals who could deal with the arrival of migrants from a multiple perspective (social, economic, cultural, etc.). And the EUAA has commissioned Deusto to review and improve the evaluation of the training modules by advising their team members.
EUAA aims to develop a Common European Asylum System by facilitating, coordinating and strengthening practical cooperation between Member States on the many aspects of asylum. The ultimate goal of their work is to reach a situation where asylum practices in all EU+ member states are harmonised in accordance with EU obligations. Hence, the need for a university centre of reference such as Deusto in terms of harmonisation of curricula, competence-based learning and ongoing innovation in teaching-learning processes.
As part of this collaboration, Deusto is revising and improving the EUAA Training Curriculum, the EUAA's core training tool consisting of approximately 48 interactive modules. In addition, in-depth work is underway to improve its quality assurance system, another cornerstone of its activities. Finally, it provides advice on another of EUAA's objectives, which is to strengthen the assessments used in the training modules, which will help the agency to improve its compliance with the European Higher Education Area Quality Assurance Standards and Guidelines 2015 (ESG 2015). Training, assessment and the quality system are, in short, the areas on which Deusto is working together with EUAA professionals.
For all this work, and given its markedly interdisciplinary nature, the University has set up a team of academics and experts from the Teaching Innovation Unit, the Human Rights Institute and International Relations. The Educational Innovation Unit provides its service to the university community, mainly to the teaching staff, in their teaching work and for their professional development within the framework of the European Higher Education Area, based on the "UD Learning Model", and complying with the quality assurance system. Likewise, the Pedro Arrupe Human Rights Institute is the academic unit within the University of Deusto whose main raison d'être is to work in favour of a human rights culture from a university perspective, and with a marked social and international vocation through teaching, research, awareness-raising and social advocacy.
