Latest blog articles

The internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) relates to sensitive topics of public concern. Considering the ongoing debate in the Netherlands regarding the challenges related to the internationalisation of higher education, it is time to take a step back and remember the many benefits as...

The European Union and its member states have failed to comply with their extraterritorial human rights obligations to provide humanitarian aid and fulfil the subsistence rights of asylum-seekers.

The aim of this contribution is to assess what has been achieved since the adoption of the 1986 Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for the realisation of these human rights.

Published on LBM. To an increasing extent many EU Member States are victim of a variety of natural disasters, including heavy rainfall, flooding, earthquakes, volcano eruptions and tsunamis. A major problem is that after every new natural disaster politicians often have the tendency to play Santa...

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...