On 26 June 2018 Claire Achmad will defend her PhD thesis Children’s Rights in International Commercial Surrogacy.

On 10 December Walter Burkard won the Jaap Doek Children’s Rights Thesis Award 2020 for his thesis on climate change and children’s rights.

The Jaap Doek Children’s rights thesis award is an annual award for the best thesis in the field of Children’s Rights granted by Defence for Children and the Department of Child Law of the Leiden Law School. This year the thesis award will be presented for the fifth time.

Develop a tool to assess land tenure, access to land and, and land tenure conflict in Timor-Leste

From March 28 to 31 twelve student teams from different countries visited Leiden to participate in the second edition of the Children’s Rights Moot Court. They were invited to plead an interesting and challenging immigration law case.

Mark Klaassen presenter at the Reuniting Families: From Access to Integration event organized by the EU office of the Red Cross in Brussels.

The drafting of a handbook that serves as the first guide to European law in the area of children's rights, taking into account the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), as well as the decisions of the European Committee of Social Rights…

From the rights of refugee children to the right to a sustainable Earth. The online platform Leiden Children's Rights Observatory makes information on children’s rights accessible and raises the social and scientific debate on this subject worldwide. Ton Liefaard, Professor of Children's Rights and…

Predictors of work functioning in persons with multiple sclerosis

Crime victims cannot always fully exercise their rights, said Maarten Kunst, Professor of Criminology, in his inaugural lecture on 26 October. His mission is to find out why exactly this is and to see whether change can be brought about.

In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century.

Stichting Migratierecht Nederland and the Europa Institute of Leiden University are jointly organising the conference ‘Children’s Rights and Migration’ that will take place in Leiden on 26 January 2023. Researchers, lawyers, judges, policy makers and other professionals from migration legal practice…

Which challenges exist for girls to effectuate their right to education and specifically getting access to education?

Videos shared on social media have become important evidence to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable. What does this increased use of digital open source evidence mean for the quality of international human rights accountability? Through an innovative experimental design, this project…

Large numbers of children all over the world face significant health risks, such as infectious and chronic diseases, malnutrition, injuries and the consequences of natural disasters, protracted armed conflicts and poverty.

From 2 to 17 January, Leiden University co-organised an interdisciplinary course on children’s rights, that took place at the Centre for Studies on Justice and Society at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

A new website has been designed to make the Leiden Children’s Rights Observatory, which started in 2018, more accessible.

Almost three years after receiving her honorary doctorate, Dr Graça Machel returned to Leiden University. Over the course of two days she spoke with students, researchers, and other interested persons, about human rights – particularly those of women and children – in a world in which these are continually…

In this article, Meier & Nadler suggest that while non-citizen enfranchisement boosts participation across all citizens, citizens with immigration backgrounds are more reactive to the NCV rights in terms of higher turnout. In this way, the paper adds a critical nuance to individual-based explanations…

Does foreign aid promote human rights?

On 3 December 2019, Meda Couzens defended her thesis 'The application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by national courts'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. T. Liefaard and Prof. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen.

On Thursday 20 May 2021, Tania Li delivered the annual Van Vollenhoven Lecture.

All children have rights, and so foster children also have rights. But when these rights are not observed, there are not many options available to foster children to assert their rights. PhD defence on 8 October 2020.

In secondary school, homophobic language is common, even in the Netherlands where there is high acceptance of homosexuality in the adult population. Adolescents especially in lower educational levels have prevailingly negative attitudes towards their lesbian and gay peers. Peer education with its participatory…

This summer school focuses on the emergence of sexual orientation, gender identity (SOGI) and intersex issues in different areas of international law, such as human rights law, refugee law, international economic law, and international criminal law. Further information for this summer course will be…

On Friday 8 February 2019, we were honored by a visit of Ms. Anna Batalla, Human Rights Officer at the Petitions and Inquiries Section of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights - United Nations, who gave a lecture on bringing a case to the Committee on the Rights of the Child and on the…

Many dangerous diseases such as COVID-19, Ebola and Q fever have jumped from animals to humans. But it is not only because of these diseases that we should include animals in our health policy, but also because of their right to health.

In early January, the Master of Laws: Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights released its January Newsletter to its friends and partner networks.

Matheus Mendes was awarded the 12th Jaap Doek Thesis Prize at a ceremony on 13 December 2024 for his thesis on the right to read. The prize honours outstanding master’s theses in children’s rights.

The department of Child Law of Leiden University and Defence for Children invite you to the eighth Jaap Doek Children’s Rights Thesis Award ceremony. The ceremony will take place online, on Thursday 10 December from 15.30 until 17.00h.

‘Children’s rights are somewhat of a poor relation’, says Professor of Law and Health Mirjam Sombroek-van Doorm. In her inaugural lecture, she will emphasise how more attention needs to be paid to children’s rights in current thinking on law and health.

Comprehensive, scholarly compilation of legal studies of substantive and procedural children’s rights, breaking new ground by analysing a wide range of international children's rights issues.

In the present-day United States, to what degree(s) are far-right men and women similar and/or dissimilar in their motivating factors for engaging in far-right social movement activism?

Charlotte Parree won the Jaap Doek Children's Rights Thesis Prize on Tuesday afternoon, 6 December, with her thesis entitled 'Suffering knows no age; active termination of life does.' The prize was awarded for the tenth time by em. prof. Jaap Doek.

On Friday 23 November 2018 the Institute of Immigration Law and the Department of Child Law (both Leiden University) will organize an international conference on ‘Safeguarding children’s rights in immigration law’ at Leiden Law School.

The action plan focuses on addressing key challenges posed by technological developments and trends in biomedical practices

Leiden University’s Executive Board has appointed South African Professor Ann Skelton as the new Chair of Children’s Rights in a Sustainable World as of 1 October 2022.

On the 24th of March, Prof. Ton Liefaard gave a lecture at the Girne American University entitled ‘International Children’s Rights: Achievements and Challenges’.

Peter Rodrigues, Professor Emeritus of Immigration and board member of the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, recently dealt with a fascinating case in which a woman with Russian nationality felt she had suffered discrimination.

The question of land property titles is a common source of conflict between indigenous communities and federal authorities all over the Americas. A new Panamanian law have led indigenous communities to reach out to archaeologist Dr Natalia Donner. A grant from the Centre for Indigenous American Studies…

The Children’s Rights Observatory is pleased to launch the Spanish version of the website. This new feature of the website is a result of the partnership between Leiden Law School and the Center for Constitutional Studies of the Mexican Supreme Court (CEC-SCJN).

In this new series, students have the opportunity to meet leading children's rights experts, including representatives of UN agencies, international civil society organizations and research institutes.

Master of Laws: Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights Outstanding Student Research Theses

Nuran Buket Cengiz defended her thesis on 13 June 2017

Children are suffering disproportionally from the coronavirus measures. They feel depressed more often compared to other age groups. But what about the legal perspective? Are children’s rights being violated?

The book 'The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child' is the result of the international academic conference – ’25 Years CRC’ – which was held in November 2014 in Leiden on the occasion of the 25th birthday of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.