Latest blog articles

In European societies, Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting FGM/C is regarded as an alien cultural practice that should not be part of society. It is seen as a barbaric tradition that is associated with refugees and immigrants from African and Muslim States who have brought this custom to Europe.

The development of human rights law is part of a fundamental shift in the nature and purpose of the international legal order. Where once international law was considered to regulate purely inter-state concerns, we now talk of the existence of international community interests and a shared...

‘Police, open the door!’ A sentence often heard when police arrest people at their houses. These arrests are often carried out by heavily armed police teams and accompanied by noise, shouting and violence. In this often chaotic situation, one party is often forgotten: the child(ren) of the arrested...

What really makes the MSP special is the small-scale teaching and the close contact with students. Us as teachers get to know you as students very well and vice versa. Because of this, I can teach you a lot more than what you need to know to just pass my exams. I can really make a meaningful...

I have worked with many different kinds of students- economics students, law students, American exchange students- and I think the MSP students are quite special. I have a feeling that the students we have at the MSP are the type of people who are not interested in making it big in the world, but...

When you look at the amount of choice that students have at the Maastricht Science Programme to build their own curriculum, coupled with the advising and the academic resources, the potential is limitless. It is a bit daring to give that high degree of freedom to students. But the students here...

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. Some claimed that social rights could never be true rights. Others claimed that without social rights...

Over 30 states and 40 business and civil society groups debated strategies for affordable and sustainable medicines prices at last month’s second WHO Fair Pricing Forum—co-sponsored by the government of South Africa.

Marital captivity, which describes a situation in which one or both spouses are not able to terminate a religious marriage and thereby is forced to remain married against her or his will, is an issue that has been receiving national and international attention.

Universality is the idea that universal facts exist and can be progressively discovered, whereas relativism denies the existence of universal facts. It follows that universality presupposes a system of universal values applicable to all human beings, which is denied by relativism.