For most children in the Netherlands, December 5th is a magical day as they eagerly await the arrival of Saint Nicholas, bringing gifts and joy to their homes. This year, the festivities were not limited to children’s doorsteps. On the same day, Maastricht University (UM) hosted its Children’s...
My dissertation was about the applicability of international children’s (human) rights to children living in Somaliland, an unrecognised state. Moreover, I studied how national laws protect children’s rights in Somaliland.
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. The findings in the report do however...
Although the delta variant is currently leading to a sharp increase in the number of positive Covid 19 tests, hospital admissions are fortunately still low. Let's hope it stays this way and that with the growing number of vaccinations we slowly move in the right direction with Covid 19 in Europe. If...
About a year ago, this blog published my contribution “Let us not forget about EU fundamental rights,” which addressed the situation at the EU’s external borders. At the time, the decision of the ECtHR in the case of N.D and N.T v. Spain, was heavily criticised for failing to protect the right to...
In the fall of last year, the Dutch Raad voor Cultuur has issued an advice on how the Dutch government and Dutch museums (and the broader public in the Netherlands in general) should deal with the continuing presence of colonial-era heritage in Dutch museum collections. The report constitutes a...
It is most appropriate that a classroom in our Faculty of Law at University Maastricht has been named after someone who was a legal legend in his own country (Nigeria) and was the first legal luminary of exceptional quality in the African world: Judge Taslim Olawale Elias.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities; can make you commit atrocities” (Voltaire). When reading about the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide it is difficult to understand how such events could ever have taken place. How can a society turn on a particular group and send them to death camps? How...
After an exhausting few months in the ‘COVID-19 era’—as we can call it now—after months of hard work and the stress of dealing with a pandemic, everybody is looking to take a break during the summer. But unlike in recent years when we could plan our summer vacation months in advance, this year it...
Simone Veil passed away on 30 June 2017, just two weeks shy of her 90th birthday. The fact that her funeral was a national ceremony at the Hȏtel des Invalides, and that her remains have been interred in the Panthéon - as one of the four women who have been bestowed with this honour because of their...
