Max van der Stoel Awards 2017 awarded to four theses on human rights

The jury led by Prof. Jenny Goldschmidt, emeritus Professor in Human Rights Law at the University of Utrecht, was impressed by Madeline Garlick’s solid work on solidarity and fair sharing of responsibilities in law and practice for the international protection of refugees in the European Union. She received the first price (2,500 euro) for the PhD thesis Solidarity under Strain, defended at the Faculty of Law of the Radboud University, Nijmegen.

According to the jury, she developed a very thorough analysis of the concept of solidarity and the fair sharing of responsibility as enacted in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union as a foundation for the EU’s policies on asylum, migration and borders. The author sees solidarity as an emerging international principle and the jury agrees that in times of globalization this principle can provide a basis for a better protection of fundamental rights, in particular for migrants.

A dissertation on Dave Eggers and Human Rights Culture by Sean Bex of Gent University was awarded with second prize (1,000 euro). To the jury the reading of his work was an eye-opening illustration of the different ways to approach the human rights discourse beyond the disciplines of law and political science.

The first prize in the category Master’s theses and academic articles went to Petri Freundlich for the thesis International Humanitarian Law in Human Rights: a Comparative Analysis Between the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, written in the Public International Law program of Leiden University. This first prize carries a monetary award of 1,000 euro. The second price (500 euro) was for the Master’s thesis of Sam Mosallai, also from the Radboud University Nijmegen. His thesis is on The Compatibility of Australian Asylum Policy Aimed at Unauthorized Maritime Arrivals with International Refugee and Human Rights Law.

On the Max van der Stoel Award

The Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award was established by Tilburg University and, for several years now, has been awarded by the School of Human Rights Research to research carried out in The Netherlands and Belgium. Since 2002, this award has been called the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award, in honor of the man who, in that year, left Tilburg University as professor of International Law and who had proven to be an indefatigable champion of human rights. Max van der Stoel (1924-2011) exerted himself as a politician, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, and UN Rapporteur on Human Rights.