Rowie Rensink is a researcher at the programme 'The Netherlands and Afghanistan 2001-2021'. She focuses mainly on issues of legitimacy, legality, responsibility and accountability. The analysis of national decision-making processes also touches on her research area.
Before joining the programme, Rensink worked as a researcher at the parliamentary committee investigating the State Department's non-lethal assistance programme, under which several Syrian armed groups were supported between 2015 and 2018. Until 2020, she worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on UN and human rights-related files.
She was also involved in several research projects - including the creation of 'The Syrian Gulag', a work by Prof Uğur Ümit Üngör and Jaber Baker - and wrote policy papers on the UN architecture for peacebuilding.
Her own research focuses on (the interpretation of) mandates of UN investigation and evidence-gathering mechanisms in Syria and Iraq. She is also an editor at ZemZem: a popular science journal on the Middle East, North Africa and Islam.
Rensink studied Political Science, Arabic Language and Culture, Middle East Studies (University of Amsterdam) and International Crimes, Criminology and Conflict (VU Amsterdam).
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