Clinic makes submission to U.N. on families and national security in the Netherlands
To date, the implications of national security policies for the family—both as a unit and for individual family members—have in large part escaped scrutiny.
Cover of the clinic's submission
This Duke International Human Rights Clinic submission to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism aims to fill this gap.
Through a human rights lens, it analyses the core ways in which national security policies in the Netherlands both involve and impact families and individual family members. From counter-terrorism financing prosecutions to child protection measures to prevention policies that mobilize care professionals, these impacts fall into a series of inter-linked categories that show the various tensions in how families are perceived and treated as government allies, threats, or sometimes simultaneously both.
The report on which this submission is based—Families in the Crosshairs: A Human Rights Analysis of the Netherlands’ National Security Policies—is forthcoming in early 2021.