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I was born in Aachen, a child of a German mother and a Palestinian father. As a German, I am the owner of the most ‘powerful passport’ in the world -- a passport that grants me the freedom to travel and visit the most beautiful places around the globe. Yet, my Palestinian roots were seeded in Gaza, ...

Master's student Nassim Abba recently completed an internship at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We asked him and his internship supervisor Ms. Nicole Maes how the Master's programme in Public Policy and Human Development prepares students to take up positions as interns, trainees and eventu...

The world is an unfair, unequal, insecure and unhealthy place for about half its population. Around 30% of ‘us’ have no access to adequate healthcare when needed, and 40% face a complete or near-complete loss of income security when a personal or a national economic crisis strikes. At least a third ...

A country’s ability to close the fiscal gap is based on its tax revenue, and there are three clear reasons for this. First, since the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the 2030 Agenda, implementation is mainly the responsibility of the countries themselves, not NGOs or the private sector....

The upcoming UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants holds the promise of progress. But ahead of the summit, communications staff are pushing a warped view of migrant diversity. Even the International Organization of Migration (IOM) is straying from its mission to uphold the human dignity and well-being...

This is the sixth post in our series ahead of the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, 19 September 2016. The full series covers several key aspects of migration: from governance and health, to environment and culture, to development and forced migration. A round-up post will follow shortly after th...

On the education front, the MDGs were no paradigm-shifters -- but from a policy perspective their sheer scope did help drive the global development agenda for education. Some 15 years after the Millennium Declaration, how much progress has there been across the development indicators for education? ...

Health is one of the core elements in human capital development and is explicitly presented under Goal 3, which aims to “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”. This goal is far more inclusive than its predecessor and seeks to put the issue high up on the 2030 Agenda....

How international is Maastricht? According to the City Council of Maastricht, there were 16,933 non-Dutch residents registered in the city, as of 31 December 2015 — making up 13.8% of the population. Non-Dutch citizens living in Maastricht come from a diverse range of countries. In fact, 153 n...

In the weeks approaching the one-year anniversary of the death of Alan Kurdi, another picture — again of a child in crisis — drew the world’s attention back to the heavy toll of insecurity for some of the most vulnerable populations. In contrast to the picture of Alan Kurdi, which inspired a call fo...

Two senior fellows, Prof. Luc Soete and Dr. Alessio Brown, recently featured in articles by the Financial Times and T-Systems magazine. Both wrote about the future world of work amid accelerating technological change — touching on the risks and rewards and the assumptions and disruptions. In a...

Eradicating poverty has been a global priority since the founding of the United Nations. Thanks to international efforts, the number of people living in extreme poverty around the world has fallen by more than half over the last three decades: 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015, according to...

As Ban Ki-Moon approaches the end of his mandate, consultations are under way to find a successor. A leading candidate for the post is Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO. During an event at Chatham House, a think tank in London, on 6 September 2016, she outlined what would be her main prioriti...

If impact is so difficult to attribute to the MDGs, how should we monitor the progress of the SDGs? In March 2016, the UN General Assembly adopted 230 indicators to cover the 17 SDGs and their accompanying 169 targets. But given the limitations of and discussion surrounding impact attribution, shoul...

Today is the first anniversary of the death of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned with half his family while trying to reach Europe in search of asylum. First and foremost, his death, like that of more than 5,000 other migrants who died crossing the Mediterranean last year, is a h...

Dr. Melissa Siegel has been appointed Professor of Migration Studies at Maastricht University from August 2016. She has also been appointed Co-Director of the Maastricht Center for Citizenship, Migration and Development (MACIMIDE) from 1 September 2016. She joins Professors Gerard-Rene de Groot and ...

My ‘mygration’ story is rooted in the politics of a fractured subcontinent; politics that are emblematic of the region. My maternal grandfather moved from Delhi to East Pakistan during partition in 1947, with a desire to build a new life in a new nation. But in 1971 Pakistan was split in two. My gra...

The GPAC² PhD programme, designed for working professionals, brings us not only interesting PhD fellows but also increases our academic network thanks to external supervisors. One of our associated researchers, Prof. Louis Volante, initially came in as supervisor to Dr. Derek Copp, but is now contri...

Ana Cristina Calderon Ramirez, a PhD Fellow on our GPAC² programme, has beaten around 100 other researchers to win Best Paper Award at the International Public Procurement Conference 7 (IPPC7). The paper, ‘Elements of public procurement reform and their effect on the public sector in Latin Ame...

“I was born in Uganda, I am Rwandan, but I grew up in South Africa.” This is my standard response to the question “Where are you from?” – because I genuinely feel like I am from all three countries....