Latest blog articles

SMECC stands for School, Minimum standard, Education, Child-friendly policy and care-Continuum. Imagine SMECC as a flat drawing of a house. The regulatory backstop is the minimum standard in family litigation for competent parenthood – far on the horizon, however, a necessary fundament of human...

Asylum seekers usually do not cross borders with a bag of documents. They have lost their personal belongings or have been confiscated by smugglers. Oral statements are therefore the only proof of origin. ^{(Dutch only)} 

Every once in a while it will pop up again as an argument: a judge may not occupy the seat of a legislator (or politician)... This article is only available in Dutch.

In September 2015 for the second time this year, after a first mobilization of more resources in June 2015 already,[1] the European Commission announced additional financial assistance of €801.3 million from the 2015 EU budget to tackle the current refugee crisis in the European Union (EU).[2]

It took quite a while before the European countries realized and recognized that the influx from asylum-seekers via the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey into the European Union is not just a matter of controlling the outside borders of the Union, but also a humanitarian and human rights issue. Some...

I am sure you have heard that the Bulgarian government built a fence on the Bulgarian – Turkish border and that the ‘refugee crisis’ put the national asylum system to the test. What about the Bulgarian integration policies? Did you know that currently refugees in Bulgaria face ‘zero’ integration...

Refugee crisis and migration may obviously have a lot of different sources. The current refugee crisis in Europe is obviously strongly related to the war in Syria. However, quite often migration and hence a stream of refugees, can also be caused by natural disasters, even by climate change. Some...

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...