Latest blog articles

After months of news about asylum seekers dying in the Mediterranean Sea, weeks of steadily increasing influx of people from the eastern borders of the EU, and witnessing the temporary exit of Germany from the Schengen agreement last weekend, the Maastricht University Faculty of Law has announced...

We are getting better and better at knowing how to help traumatized children. And how we can prevent childhood trauma. That knowledge is of great importance for refugee children, and not only for them. It would prove very helpful to all children if the gap between what we know and what we do in...

Duo blog by Dersim Yabasun and Alexander Hoogenboom

At the outset of this blog there is reason to underline the value of an effective asylum policy. There is a tendency in some populist media, as well as among some populist politicians, to depict and cast the current humanitarian crisis as largely...

This year we have witnessed an extraordinary and tragic series of events. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have tried to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. The UN estimates that over 2,500 people have lost their lives in the process. In the last few weeks, the focus has shifted to the EU’s...

On 8 September 2015 State Secretary for Justice and Security Klaas Dijkhoff announced that from now on only refugees who have applied for asylum in a safe place outside the EU would be accepted in the Netherlands. The government wants to put an end to asylum-seekers placing their fate in the hands...

According to the latest numbers of the UNHCR, more than 35,000 persons have crossed the Mediterranean in 2015 and more than 1600 have died. Persons on board of these boats have various reasons to take such dangerous routes.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), around 70,000 refugees have reached Turkey and it is expected that hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees will arrive at the Turkish border in the coming days and weeks.