Latest blog articles

A brief explainer about the ICJ case brought by South Africa against Israel

On 29 December, almost three months after the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing Israeli military strikes on the Gaza Strip, which had by then resulted in the deaths of more than 21,000 people and more than...

Why it is so challenging for Dutch authorities to effectively implement the government policy against serious drug related organized crime? Recently, my colleagues and I from Maastricht University and Erasmus University Rotterdam published an article in the Dutch Tijdschrift over Cultuur en...

The debate on the implications of Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia recently intensified after a report concluded that the Dutch forces had used extreme violence. Reactions to the report reveal that the issue remains controversial and challenging to discuss. The findings in the report do however...

Although the delta variant is currently leading to a sharp increase in the number of positive Covid 19 tests, hospital admissions are fortunately still low. Let's hope it stays this way and that with the growing number of vaccinations we slowly move in the right direction with Covid 19 in Europe. If...

Almost 20 years ago, in 2002, I had the honour to give one of the “William Harvey lectures” at the University of Padua, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Englishman’s graduation with a degree in medicine from the famous Italian university.

To any international lawyer, Hugo de Groot (10 April 1583 – 28 August 1645), usually referred to by his Latin name as Hugo Grotius, does not need any introduction. He is generally seen as the “father of public international law”, often together with Francisco De Vitoria (1483-1546) and Alberico...

After an exhausting few months in the ‘COVID-19 era’—as we can call it now—after months of hard work and the stress of dealing with a pandemic, everybody is looking to take a break during the summer. But unlike in recent years when we could plan our summer vacation months in advance, this year it...

It feels sometimes as if the whole world of science is working exclusively on finding a cure for COVID-19. If you are looking at the search for an effective vaccine, it was recently published in The New York Times that more than 130 vaccine candidates are currently in the pipeline, which is still...

In the current phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries across Europe are fortunately seeing a decrease in detected infections, hospital admissions and deaths. This is the effect of lockdown policies with different elements but with the common denominator of social distancing, travel restrictions...

With every month, every week that passes, we’re seeing the publication of more and more medical data and studies on COVID-19. A friend of mine who is the editor of a very reputable international medical journal told me recently that they get more than 100 submissions per day that involve research on...