Latest blog articles

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 publ

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.

Today in times of pandemic hospitals face a crisis of scarce resources. In many places this has already led to measures of triage where critical medical care is rationed to those who are most likely to benefit from it.

I wrote my PhD towards the last days of the debate over “social rights”. This debate harkens back to the fifties, when the International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights was being negotiated.

25 years after the Genocide Against the Tutsi, the denial of this genocide still poses a serious challenge to prevention and reconciliation. How to address this problem was one of the central questions discussed during a recent commemorative conference in the Peace Palace.

In this entry I want to mention four considerations that suggest that human rights lawyers should be cautious in embracing basic income as a replacement for human rights. These reflections should be seen as merely exploratory.

To speak of economic justice today is to speak of the basic income. A basic income can be defined as an unconditional cash payment to all persons who form part of a political community. As automation increases, there is fear that labor will be replaced by “robots”.

Instead of protecting the victims of Burundi, the current government shields those who are responsible. The problem with such impunity is that it de facto “legalizes” violence as no accountability is created.

Trevor Burrus claims that health care cannot be a fundamental right. He is not alone in saying this, but the way he says it is noteworthy.

Roland Moerland spoke at Docfest about the bystander effect, empathy and agency, self-sacrifice and other remarkable features of the documentary City of Ghosts.