Master

The Children’s Rights Education Fund is an initiative that strengthens global leadership in children’s rights by offering financial support to students of the Advanced LL.M. in International Children’s Rights at Leiden Law School.

Master

The bi-annual Children’s Rights Moot Court (CRM), organised by the Department of Child Law in partnership with Baker McKenzie, was initiated by Leiden Law School in 2014 on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Children’s Rights Monitor provides a thematic overview of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Netherlands.

On Wednesday 13 December, Melanie Fink defended her doctoral thesis ‘Frontex and Human Rights: Responsibility in “Multi-Actor Situations” under the ECHR and EU Public Liability Law’. The supervisors are Rick Lawson and Jorrit Rijpma from Leiden, as well as Manfred Nowak, and Stephan Wittich from the…

The Children’s Rights Monitor provides a thematic overview of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Netherlands.

In this article, Tom Buitelaar proposes a systematic framework for analyzing the impact of individual characteristics of peacekeeping leaders on the behaviour of field-level personnel in UN peacekeeping operations.

Joe Finnerty has co-edited the 2026 Symposium in the Human Rights Law Review entitled Legitimate Aims and Ulterior Purposes in International Human Rights Law: Comparative Perspectives.

This research project from Leiden University looks at the opportunities and threats that flow from the existence of institutional and normative diversity in the area of fundamental rights for the effective protection of those rights in a pluralist world.

Leiden University’s Master of Laws in International Children’s Rights (LL.M.) looks at human rights laws for children from a comparative perspective.

On 3 December 2019, Hanna Bosdriesz defended her thesis 'Furthering the fight against impunity in Latin America: the contributions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to domestic accountability processes'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. L.J. van den Herik and Prof. M.A.H. van…

Discover the Summer School Frontiers of Children’s Rights by Leiden Law Academy, with this year's theme of accountability and access to justice. Read more here!

This research paper seeks to examine the nature of the nexus between right-wing extremism and the military by surveying five potential consequences (i.e., problem areas) arising from the presence of right-wing extremists within the armed forces of twelve Western countries.

Taking Mozambique as a case study, the aim of this research is to develop a methodology for improving flood risk assessments by extending hydrological records using paleo hydrologic evidence of past floods, combined with a socio-legal assessment of the land rights of those impacted by climate change…

As children learn, develop and acquire more skills, their legal position also changes. Professor of Children’s Rights Ton Liefaard works closely together with Leiden social sciences researchers to shed light on these growing capacities and their implications for our legal system. ‘Our ideas about children’s…

Industrialised countries extract natural resources in the territories of indigenous peoples, and appropriate the knowledge and culture of these peoples. Leiden anthropologists work to protect the rights of indigenous peoples. Their knowledge and advice enable governments to source sustainable produc…

On 16 January 2024, Professor Obiora Okafor from Johns Hopkins University opened the third cycle of the Owada Chair with the lecture Global Diversity and the Living International Human Rights Law.

According to research conducted by regional Dutch newspaper ‘BN DeStem’, emigration to Russia certainly isn’t off the cards for some Dutch people. Information sessions are being held for anyone interested in emigrating to these countries. Is it acceptable for civil servants to get involved in these…

On 26 juni 2018, Claire Achmad defended her doctoral thesis 'Children’s Rights in International Commercial Surrogacy: Exploring the Challenges from a Child Rights, Public International Law Perspective'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. Dr. Mariëlle Bruning.

Are you thinking about studying this Advanced LL.M. International Children's Rights? Learn more and watch the videos.

The heritage of Indigenous Peoples has long been researched and commented upon from the outside. This book adopts an innovative approach by engaging with the heritage of Indigenous Peoples from the ‘inside’.

This socio-legal research focuses on the impacts of environmental displacement on land rights and land-related conflict in Mozambique in the aftermath of cyclone Idai, and on the role of the legal framework in addressing these problems.

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Choosing a study programme is fun and exciting, but it’s not always easy. Your choice of study is a major decision; after all, it is about your future. At the same time, it’s good to remember that this choice will not determine the rest of your life.

Valentina Carraro explores the relationship between overlapping UN human rights institutions, specifically the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)

This year’s Staatsrechtconferentie (Constitutional Law Conference) was held at the University of Amsterdam on 13 December 2019 and dedicated to the topic of the Economic Constitution. Dr. Eduardo Arenas Catalán, lecturer at the Europa Institute, presented his paper Where do social rights begin? Dr.…

On 18 March 2020, Hoko Horii defended her thesis ‘Child Marriage as a Choice. Rethinking agency in international human rights’. The doctoral research was supervised by prof. A.W. Bedner and prof. G.A. van Klinken.

On 7 September, Francesc Claret Traid defended the thesis 'On the nature of the right to resist: a rights-based theory of the ius resistendi in liberal democracies'. The doctoral research was supervised by Afshin Ellian and Gelijn Molier.

In October, the Provincial Executive in Friesland reprimanded four civil servants who had signed an incendiary letter asking the government to adopt a more active climate policy. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, feels that the Executive made a mistake.

The ECtHR needs to provide effective rights protection, but it also needs to set clear standards while showing deference to decisions made at the national level. Especially when socio-economic issues are concerned, meeting these different demands is a challenging task.

Human Rights at Risk brings together social scientists, legal scholars, and humanities scholars to analyze the policy challenges of human rights protection in the twenty-first century.

Under Dutch law, like German or English law, the violation of a statutory provision does not establish civil liability for damage caused to another person. Such liability requires that the statutory provision concerned aims to protect against the damage or, put differently, that the harmed interest…

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

How can child participation be defined, what is the importance of child participation and how can it be promoted?

Our Master Law in European and International Human Rights Law (LL.M.) looks at the various human rights protection mechanisms from a comparative perspective

On 10 november 2021, Carmel van Niekerk-Jacobs defended the thesis 'Realising the right to reproduce with assistance in South Africa'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.J. Sloth-Nielsen and Prof. T. Liefaard.

Recently Cambridge University Press published dr. Jan Osters monograph “Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right”.

This collection includes six short policy-focused contributions exploring how legislation and policy on counter cyber terrorism unfold at the national level in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, France, and at the regional level of the European Union.

On 9 January 2019, Willem van der Muur defended his thesis 'Land rights and the forces of adat in democratizing Indonesia'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. A.W. Bedner and Prof. dr. J.M. Otto.

On 7 February 2019, Helena Ursic-Vrabec defended her thesis 'Uncontrollable: Data subject rights and the data- driven economy'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. S. van der Hof.