The Department of Child Law of Leiden University and Defence for Children invite you to the ninth Jaap Doek Children’s Rights Thesis Award ceremony, which will take place online, on Tuesday 7 December from 15.30 onwards (in English).

On Friday 12 January 2018, the University of Curaçao celebrated its 39 years of existence. Prof. Ton Liefaard , Professor of Children’s Rights and UNICEF Chair in Children’s Rights addressed the audience with a lecture entitled: “20 years United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Do we…

How important is a child’s right to meaningful peer relationships? Vaishnavi Ramalingam wrote her master’s thesis on this topic, and was recently awarded the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) Jan Brouwer Thesis Prize 2026.

How do you make lobbying and rhetoric both challenging and understandable for high school students? Professor Jaap de Jong found the answer in climate activist Greta Thunberg. Together with his colleague Arco Timmermans, he developed a digital guest lecture on how to present a convincing story.

What does it mean to be the ‘perfect student’? This is the focus of the Perspectify exhibition, which was opened on 16 November by President of the Executive Board Annetje Ottow.

On 13 April, an expert meeting to discuss the doctoral thesis of Eduardo Arenas Catalán was held at Leiden Law School. The discussion, chaired by Aart Hendriks, Professor of Health Law at Leiden Law School, included the contributions from Javier Couso Salas, Professor at Universidad Diego Portales and…

On 1 November 2023, Professor Ton Liefaard presented research on the rights of undocumented children to the Council of Ministers of Curaçao.

The winner of this year’s Jaap Doek Children’s Rights Thesis Award wants to raise more awareness for children who have a parent in detention: ‘It’s time we stop looking the other way and actually think about the impact.’

Professor Ann Skelton has been elected as Chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Professor Dr. Ton Liefaard, UNICEF Chair in Children’s Rights, has been elected as member of the Steering Committee of the Children’s Rights European Academic Network (CREAN).

From 5 to 9 March 2018, the Child Law Department and the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden Law School and the School of Law of the University of Curaçao Dr. Moises Da Costa Gomez hosted a Spring School on Children’s Rights in the Caribbean Region in Curaçao.

The Dutch State is set to challenge The Hague Court of Appeal's ruling that the Netherlands must stop exporting arms to Israel at the Supreme Court. The government believes that foreign policy falls within the political domain and not within the judiciary. Geerten Boogaard, Professor of Constitutional…

Leiden researchers have developed an app that doctors can use to more easily determine the right dosage of medication for corona patients. At the moment, doctors are prescribing many existing kinds of medication to patients. Using the app, they can determine a safe and effective dosage.

From 24 to 28 June the 7th edition of Leiden University’s annual Frontiers of Children’s Rights Summer School took place in Leiden and The Hague.

Around 15% of all Dutch people say they can't distinguish between left and right. People taking their driving test regularly take wrong turns and arguments flare up because that all-important turn is missed on the way to the camp site. Researchers in Leiden and Utrecht are trying to find out what's…

Houben and Ten Oever investigate the relationship between public service obligations in EU law (PSOs) and human rights. PSOs served mainly as a correction to free market forces and did not originate from a human rights perspective.

On the occasion of the launch of the Council of Europe’s new children’s rights strategy 2016-2021, the Republic of Bulgaria hosted a high-level conference in Sofia on the 5th and 6th of April, 2016.

From 1-2 December 2022, the Frontex fundamental rights team met for a Workshop to reflect on their role and discuss current issues. Melanie Fink, Assistant Professor of European Law, was invited to contribute to the discussion with insights from her research on Frontex’s obligations and responsibili…

After a year of hard work, the second class of students of the Master of Laws: Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights received their well-deserved master diplomas on Monday 28 August.

On Wednesday 12 December 2018, the department of Child Law, on the initiative of dr. Yannick van den Brink, dr. Stephanie Rap en prof. dr. Ton Liefaard), organized an expert meeting on ‘Equality, children’s rights and digital technologies’. The objective of the meeting was an in-depth exchange of ideas…

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.

The Master of Laws: Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights (LL.M.) was launched in 2015 to equip a generation of professionals to protect the rights of children worldwide. As the programme celebrates its 10th anniversary, we reflect on its impact.

On 30 October 2017, the current class of students of the advanced LL.M. programme International Children’s Rights visited the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

We are pleased to invite abstracts for a conference on ‘Advancing Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights in a Polarised, Digitalised, and Unequal World’ to be held at Leiden University on 4 and 5 September 2025, in collaboration with Netherlands Network for Human Rights Researh (NNHRR).

Are you interested in meeting Bede Sheppard, Human Rights Watch’s Deputy Director of the Children’s Rights Department? Bede will be at LUC on Thursday the 26th of May for the #WatchOurSchools event in the auditorium, and we are giving our students the chance to meet with him before. In order to win…

Upon invitation by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, a large group of academics submitted a third party intervention in a case against France. On 2 November, the Committee decided to follow the intervention’s main conclusion.

On 13 May 2025, Melanie Fink presented her latest research on the role of the duty to reason and other explanation rights to safeguard human dignity in the automated state at the AI & Law Summer School hosted by the University of Tübingen.

Graduation Ceremony of the LL.M. Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights 2023-2024

Darinka Piqani visited the Law Faculty of the University of Tirana (Albania) on 16-20 January 2023 and lectured on the transparency and the right to information in EU law. These lectures were held in the context of the Research Expertise from the Academic Diaspora (READ) Fellowship that Dr Piqani holds…

Salvador Santino Regilme, Jr. Associate Professor of International Relations and Program Chair of MA in International Relations, has been honored with the Cecil B. Currey Book Award for 2023. The accolade, presented by the Association for Global South Studies (AGSS), recognizes Regilme’s exceptional…

The procedures for admitting minor asylum seekers from Camp Moria on Lesbos to the Netherlands are in breach of children’s rights according to Ton Liefaard, Professor of Children’s Rights and Peter Rodrigues, Professor of Immigration Law.

Research on 45 years of legal and economic data for 132 countries by international team shows the addition of one right for LGB people is associated with over $2000 in GDP per capita

It can seem like an almost childish mistake, but a surprising number of adults confuse left from right. Neuroscientists are only just starting to know more about directional and navigation and understand why it is so difficult to distinguish left from right . Ineke van der Ham is an expert on navigation.…

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

Mozambican politician and child rights activist Graça Machel speaks October 27 at Leiden University about her work.

It often takes longer for women with heart problems to get the right diagnosis. In her Annie Romein-Verschoor Lecture, Professor Hester den Ruijter will talk about how hormones influence the heart and the importance of medical research that focuses specifically on women.

On Thursday 22 January, the Honours College Law New Year's event addressed the urgent issue of femicide. Experience-based expert Anne-Marije van den Bersselaar and assistant professors Mojan Samadi and Ellen Gijselaar explored the topic from personal and legal perspectives.

On Thursday 22 January, the Honours College Law New Year's event addressed the urgent issue of femicide. Experience-based expert Anne-Marije van den Bersselaar and assistant professors Mojan Samadi and Ellen Gijselaar explored the topic from personal and legal perspectives.

On Wednesday 11 October 2017 the African Studies Centre Leiden and the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society are organizing a workshop.

The European Commission adopted a proposal regarding common rules promoting the right to repair for consumers.

Major renovations, much-discussed exhibitions and current museum related questions. ‘If you want to know what is happening in the art and museum sector in a very up-to-date way, then the 'Museum Talks' lecture series is the thing for you’, says Professor of Art History and organiser Stijn Bussels.

If a forged Vermeer or Rembrandt is discovered, it is world news. Yet tracing fakes has long been a low priority in art history. University lecturer Anna Tummers will receive an ERC grant of almost two million euros to change that.

Over the last few years, human Rights have become subject of intense debates in historiography. Sam Moyn’s provocative book The Last Utopia (2010) made in particular clear how important it is to investigate precisely which meaning human rights have been given in a particular context. During the research…

New research report and policy brief by Carolien Jacobs (VVI) and Bernardo Almeida (VVI)

Economic law, environmental law and human rights are important fields of law for sustainable development. But they do not interact sufficiently, which makes it difficult to implement sustainable development.

On 28 and 29 January 2020 the workshop ‘Law, Rights, and Governance in Africa. A look to the Future’ was held at Leiden Law School.

The Child Law Department of Leiden University and Defence for Children kindly invites you to the fourth Jaap Doek Children’s Rights Thesis Award Ceremony and the official launch of the book ‘The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Taking Stock after 25 Years and Looking Ahead’ (Brill…

A new report on admissibility under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on a Communications Procedure (OP3) has been published.

On 25 October 2017, the current class of students of the advanced LL.M. programme International Children’s Rights visited juvenile detention center ‘De Hunnerberg’ in Nijmegen (the Netherlands).