Felisa Tibbitts

Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Utrecht University, The Netherlands

f.l.tibbitts@uu.nl

Some years ago, when teaching a human rights course at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, I noticed that the composition of my students was overwhelmingly female. I made a mental note of this and began asking colleagues who were teaching human rights in other higher education institutions about the gender balance in their classrooms. It was the same story: mostly women.

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^{Photo credits: Anthony Tran - Unsplash}

Adriana van Dooijeweert

President, Netherlands Institute for Human Rights

Introduction

Just like everywhere in the world, also in the Netherlands violence against women is a widespread and serious problem. The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (the Dutch national human rights institution) has had this issue on the agenda since its establishment. It has, for example, encouraged the Netherlands to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) and discussed with Dutch government officials and professionals, on various occasions, the human rights aspects of violence against women.

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