The parents of Romy, Savannah and Nick have launched a petition for tougher punishments in Dutch juvenile criminal law. Their children were killed by minors.

In this commentary, Sabine Witting, Assistant Professor at eLaw, provides a comprehensive analysis of the Second Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

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.

Months after the case of the abused foster child from Vlaardingen (Zuid-Holland) came to light, many questions still remain. Why was the child not listened to? Marielle Bruning, Professor of Child Law, discussed this with NOS, NPO Radio 1, NRC and Nieuwsuur.

Over the last decades, the systematic investigation of urban settlements in Central-Tyrrhenian Italy led to the discovery of a growing number of contexts revealing both direct and indirect evidence of artisanal workshops. Such research commitment has yielded a vast amount of new data that greatly contribute…

Sharing Collections and Connecting Histories

On 18 October 2017, Leiden Law School was honored to welcome a group of experts upon invitation of Prof. M.R. Bruning, professor of Child Law and head of the Child Law Department of Leiden University, to discuss current and future research projects in the field of international child abduction law and…

Queer youths seeking asylum in the Netherlands are not adequately protected. The system that assesses asylum claims lacks child-specific processes and often fails to notice these youths' suffering.

PhD Candidate Sabine K. Witting has published an article ‘Regulating bodies: child sexuality in the digital era’ in the Critical Quarterly for Legislation and Law, Vol. 1 2019.

From 23-25 August the Child Abuse & Violence Congres ‘ Broken 2018’ took place. Mariëlle Bruning was one of the keynote speakers and talked about the child’s right to protection against all forms of violence and the implementation of this children’s right in domestic child protection systems.

Is the current existing legal framework on compulsory and voluntary care - for vulnerable young adults (between the ages of 18 to 23) - in need of revision? And if so, what kind of amendments would be advisable?

On 3 November 2022, Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Children and the Law, spoke as an expert on child protection at a roundtable discussion with Dutch Lower House members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Security.

Valedictory lecture

From April 27 to 29 April, the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance & Society in collaboration with the Law Faculty, the Gender Studies Graduate Program and the Center for Women and Gender Studies at Universitas Indonesia will organize a Research Sharing and Academic Writing Workshop on 'Child…

On 20 May 2019, Dr Yannick van den Brink, Assistant Professor at the Department of Child Law, participated in a live webinar titled ‘Child Pre-trial Detention. A Global Movement to Reduce Length of Stay’, together with colleagues from the United States and Mexico.

In its broadcast of 28 April 2019, TV programme Medialogica (Human) looked at television programme Ontvoerd (Abducted). Leiden professors Mariëlle Bruning and Jannemieke Ouwerkerk contributed to the broadcast.

On the evening of 11 September 2017, the first five-yearly anniversary of the master’s programme Child Law (Jeugdrecht) was celebrated.

Child abuse and child neglect are often seen as one and the same problem. But it can be useful to separate the two to gain more insight into the characteristics of the two phenomena. This is what pedagogical scientist Renate Buisman shows in her dissertation. PhD defence on 28 May.

Y.N. (Yannick) van den Brink (LL.M, MA) will be appointed Assistant Professor at the Child Law Department of the Leiden Law School as of 1 August 2016.

On Tuesday 4 March, Marie-Cécile Rouillon, Coordinator on the Rights of the Child at the European Commission came to give a guest lecture to students of the Advanced LLM in Children’s Rights as well as the Jeugdrecht master’s programme.

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The number of victims of child abuse is estimated to be higher during the first lockdown compared with a period without a lockdown. This is mainly due to an increase in the number of victims of emotional neglect, including educational neglect and witnessing domestic abuse. Families with children about…

On 2 and 3 October 2017, a delegation of the Child Law Department has participated in the 15th European regional conference of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect in The Hague.

Can subgroups of people be differentiated whose attitudes on the Sinterklaas festivities and Black Pete cluster with either a) high Dutch national identification or b) a strong preference for social hierarchy, also known as social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto et al., 1994)?

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Previous research has shown that extreme shyness is hereditary, but because shyness is such a broad concept it is difficult to identify specific genes. Anita Harrewijn has discovered particular brain measurements that can help. PhD defence 18 January.

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The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has accused Finland of violating the rights of Finnish children by leaving them in life-threatening conditions in Syrian camps. Ann Skelton, member of the committee, calls the situation 'inhuman'.

Researchers of the department of Child Law have submitted an advice to the Committee on the Rights of the Child of the United Nations, which monitors the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, on 7 January 2019.

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The aim of this dissertation is to provide insight in interethnic prejudice of children in the Netherlands and attitudes and ideologies that they are exposed to through two socialization agents (parents and children’s books).

The Faculty Board and the Institute of Private Law have agreed to combine the disciplines of child law, international children’s rights and health law into one Department of Child Law and Health Law.

Memorandum of Understanding Signed Between the Child Friendly Justice European Network and Leiden Law School - Child Law Department

On Thursday the 3rd of March 2016, Professor Bruning welcomed a delegation from the government of the Republic of Kosovo, within the framework of the Matra-project ‘Protecting Children in Kosovo: from Policy to Practice’.

Saeedeh Shahnahpur defended her thesis on 13 September 2016.

In the summer of 2021, Lucy Opoka was awarded one of the coveted Meijers PhD positions. In October, she arrived back in Leiden, where she obtained her LLM degree Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights in 2019. Professor Liefaard interviewed Lucy upon arrival.

In July 2019 Asser Press published the book 'Sweetie 2.0—Using Artificial Intelligence to Fight Webcam Child Sex Tourism’ which was coedited by Simone van der Hof en Bart Schermer from the Center for Law and Digital Technologies, Bert-Jaap Koops from the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society…

Children’s brains react in the same way to social feedback as adults’ brains. But handling frustration or aggression after being rejected is a different matter, developmental psychologist Michelle Achterberg has discovered. Using fMRI techniques, the development of the child brain has now been studied…

By far the majority of users of child sexual abuse networks (or child porn forums as they are sometimes called) on the dark web do not actively communicate there but download illegal material, therefore committing a criminal offence. But they often stay under the police and judiciary’s radar. PhD candidate…

When a child is placed in care, the assumption is always that the child can return home again. But there are still many questions about how this process - the 'permanency plan' - is arranged. New research aims to provide insights.