By Jhr Alexander W. Beelaerts van Blokland LL.M. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) are a new set of goals constituted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2012 and adopted by the world leaders at a UN Summit in 2015. As part of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the SDG’s form the core of the UN’s Post-2015 Development Agenda. The SDG’s succeed the Millenium Development Goals (MDG’s) which were designed to combat all forms of poverty. The SDG’s are part of the 17 Global Goals that give direction to the world wide action for sustainable development till the year of 2030. SDG 16 is about peace, justice and strong institutions. Being the world’s international city of peace and justice, the City of The Hague wants to play an active role in SDG 16: in promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and to build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. The implementation of SDG 16 can be achieved by applying twelve targets in which (local) governments, civil societies (such as businesses) and communities work together. For those twelve targets multiple tasks arise. A number of NGO’s in The Hague as well as several international courts and tribunals in The Hague showed their interest for SDG 16 as well. An example is the implementation of the Global Legal Inclusion Program (GLIM) made by MicroJustice4All for a Coalition to establish SDG 16 in multiple cities. The GLIM maps ‘marginalized groups’ such as victims of conflict and disaster and people at the bottom of the social / income pyramid and their legal rights. The target is to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration. On November 7th, 2017, the Mayor of The Hague and the Alderman for International Affairs will be present to show their commitment at a conference of MicroJustice4All. The City of The Hague will continue to involve the NGO’s , courts and tribunals in the implemention of SDG 16. To be continued ! ————— a.beelaerts@planet.nl About the author: Jhr. Alexander W. Beelaerts van Blokland LL.M. is Justice (Judge) in the (Dutch) Court of Appeal and honorary Special Advisor International Affairs, appointed in 2004 by the Mayor and Aldermen of The Hague  

By John Dunkelgrün. As you have probably experienced, there is no shortage of restaurants in The Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam. New ones are being opened all the time, often trying to distinguish themselves by the most outlandish and inappropriate combinations of ingredients. It is rare that you’ll find a restaurant that offers a truly WOW experience with its food, its ambiance and the location. We entered through the new Hudsons Bay department store which is decorated in all brightly lit white, the design chic rather than clinical. Taking the lift up to the fifth floor, you come in a totally different world. Colour comes at you from all sides, literally. Even the floor is decorated with an intricate pattern of brightly coloured shiny marble. We were welcomed in the most charming way by two young ladies. One of them took us to our table which was at the far end of the restaurant, allowing us to take in the scene. We were awed like a couple of country bumpkins. The restaurant is a long rectangle with a vaulted ceiling, somewhat reminding us of a traditional railway station. Down the middle is a long eating bar, which is also partly kitchen. The arches are sprinkled with lightbulbs so even on a cloudy night this rooftop restaurant lets you dine under the stars. Through the windows, the view of Amsterdam by night is fabulous. It is like you’re hovering above the city in a Google Earth sort of way.

When we were there, at dinner you could not eat á la carte, but had to take the full Monty: six dips, six meses, a main course and deserts. This has since been changed, as it was so much, we couldn’t even look at the deserts. The food is Eastern Mediterranean, with heavy emphasis on Lebanese and Israeli cooking. You’ll find lots of chick peas, pomegranate, eggplant and tajini among the ingredients. We were enjoying ourselves so much that I forgot to take notes and the tasting menu consisted of so many dishes, it isn’t possible to describe them all. This may be a good thing, so there will be some surprises left for you. There were some Middle East perennials such as humus and baba ganoush, which were just a little bit different. The humus was served tepid with some whole chick peas in it, the baba ganoush the best I have ever tasted. Our favourite was the roasted eggplant with saffron yogurt, basil and pomegranate. Even the ubiquitous tzatziki was special. It was not watery as it so often is, but firm like Turkish yoghurt and delicately flavoured. You should just go and let yourselves be surprised. The wine list too is original. It is a good list and not too extensive to confuse you. It offers many wines from “new” wine areas and is moderately priced. We had the “Vergelegen” Shiraz from South Africa, which was superb. The service, while still a bit uncertain, was exceptionally friendly. The maitre’d went from table to table not just with the obligatory “Everyting fine?” but asking specific questions about which foods we liked best and really listening. We have eaten several times at Ottolenghi in London, recently in some of the best restaurants in Israel, as well as in various simple specialised humus places on three continents and have found that the food at Nacarat compares very well. Every restaurant has its minuses, especially in the beginning. The service was still a bit uncertain, but Nacarat is still very new and the large crew still had to become a real team. The whole menu was simply way too much food, too much in volume and too overwhelming in its rich variety of flavours and scents. There are two disadvantages to the premises. The toilets are two floors down and if you have to leave after Hudsons Bay closes, it is a bit of a cold shower. You are escorted in the elevator to the ground floor where you exit in an darkish alley off the Rokin. There is security there so you don’t need to be worried, but one way or another this should be changed. All in all, we came away with a wonderful feeling and will be back soon. You should really try to experience the magic of Nacarat. ——– Nacarat nacarat.nl 020-7900320 Rokin 49, Amsterdam

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark. The Pirate Party are buccaneering their way into European politics, having found a foothold in the testy soil of Central Europe after colonising, in small measure, various hamlets in Sweden, Germany and Iceland.  The Czech Pirates (PPCZ), a term certainly exotic by current political pedigrees, managed to obtain over 10 percent of the vote, a result that gave them a rich harvest of 22 members in the parliamentary elections. It took nine efforts, but the Czech Pirates had been edging their way onto conspicuous terrain in various local elections, including netting 5.3 percent of the total vote in Prague in 2015. The city of Mariánské Lázně also found itself having a Pirate Mayor after garnering 21 percent of the vote. Retaining their oppositional colours, the Czech Pirates are insisting on avoiding the muddying nature of coalition talks with the overall winners. (The dangers of compromising collaboration!) Their agenda is one that has become fairly known across its other incarnations: the abolition of internet censorship, the favouring of institutional transparency, and the revision of, amongst other things, punitive copyright laws. But other agenda items form their twenty point program, including improving the lot of teacher salaries and tax reform. The latter point is particularly appropriate, given the party’s experimentation with testing EU laws on the subject of pirate sites through its “Linking is not a Crime” stance. This was sparked, in large part, by attempts by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union to target a 16-year-old for that great terror of the regulator: linking to content designated as infringing of copyright law. Launching several of their own contrarian sites, including Tipnafilm.cz and Piratskefilmy.cz, the latter carrying some 20,000 links to 5,800 movies, the Czech Pirate Party was overjoyed by the prospect of prosecution. “Our goal is to change the copyright monopoly law so that people are not fined millions for sharing culture with their friends.” As Czech Pirate Party chairman Lukáš Černohorský said at the time, belligerent and defiant, “Instead of teenagers, copyright industry lobbyists are now dealing with a political party which didn’t run the website for money but because of our conviction that linking is not and should not be a crime.” The gains of the party showed a certain mood at work and, as has been the case in much of Europe, proved boisterously, and at stages angrily, anti-establishment. Check the Polish, Polish the Czech “Europe’s redemption lies in the re-affirmation of the Lisbon Strategy of 2000 (and of Göteborg 2001), a ten-year development plan that focused on innovation, mobility and education, social, economic and environmental renewal. Otherwise a generational warfare will join class and ethnic conflicts as a major dividing line of the EU society in decline.” – prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic warned years ago in his seminal work ‘Future of Europe: Of Lisbon and Generational Interval.’ But as with other intellectual farsighted voices, it was largely ignored. Well so, until the recent alarming elections results in central Europe. Thus, across its own political spectrum the Czechs were clearly showing they can add fuel to a brewing EU political fire, setting matters to rights on the continent while tearing down assumptions. As with any fire, however, the consequences can be searing. While the Pirates did well, the Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD), a strident right wing outfit, nabbed similar numbers from the other side of the spectrum, sporting its own anti-EU, anti-immigrant brand. As its leader, Tomio Okamura, insists, “We want to leave just like Britain and we want a referendum on EU membership.” Billionaire fertilizer tycoon Andrej Babiš, the sort of oligarchic figure who should always trouble democratic sensibilities, weighed in the elections with some 30 percent of the vote with his ANO party. His version of politics, another confection of anti-politics dressed for disgruntled consumption, reprises that of the businessman turned party leader. The claim made here is common: that the machinery of governance is somehow analogous to running a business. Traditional parties, foremost amongst them the long performing Social Democrats, with whom Babiš had been in coalition with after gains made in 2013, found themselves pegged back to sixth position in the tally. The swill stick of politics did not tar Babiš all that much, a figure who has managed to develop a certain Teflon coating in a manner similar to other billionaire leaders (think Silvio Berlusconi and a certain Donald Trump in the White House). He had become the focus of suspected tax crimes, and lost his job as finance minister. European subsidies, it was claimed, had found their mysterious way into his pocket. Such suggestions merely touched the tip of a considerable iceberg, one which also consists of allegations of previous employment with the Czechoslovak secret state security service Stb. According to Slovakia’s Institute of National Memory, his code name for collaboration during his espionage stint was Bureš. The billionaire seemed distinctly unperturbed, and his party’s showing suggested that some water will slide off a duck’s back. “I am happy that Czech citizens did not believe the disinformation campaign against us and expressed their trust in us.” He roundly insisted that his was “a democratic movement” positively pro-European and pro-NATO “and I do not understand why somebody labels us as a threat to democracy.” These elections, however, will be savoured by a party that promises a fresh airing of a stale political scene, and one not nursing those prejudices that provide all too attractive gristle. Legislation, should it be implemented, may well remove the cobwebbed fears long associated with the Internet. But facing these newly elected figures will be ANO and an invigorated, indignant right-wing of politics, a far from easy proposition. ——————  About the author: Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.    

By Andree Cardona. The European Union is a trade and diplomatic partner absolutely strategic for Latin America, the bilateral relations could be better and preserve. The present article will be concentrate to highlight the trade influence that the European Union represents in Central and South America. With Central America- the European Union- subscribe the Association Agreement (AA) with political, trade and international cooperation pillars since June 2012 the Agreement was signed in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; the trade pillar has begun- ratified by Central American countries- in December 2013, product of that AA, highlights the (PRAIAA in Spanish) Regional Project of Support to the Central American Economic Integration and the implementation of the AA between European Union and Central America) this have as purpose support the Central American Economic Integration process, trade facilitation and the AA implementation. The AA in numbers- according to Central American Economic Integration Secretariat- Costa Rica and Honduras have more participative percentage of the exportations with the European Union (51.8% and 18.7% respectively) about the importations, the principles countries are Panama with 26.1% and Costa Rica 23.6%. “The trade pillar of the AA, its ambitious and cover more than only goods and duties. Besides of promote the regional integration with concrete commitments, the AA pursues the chains between two missions” said Pelayo Castro, European Union Ambassador to Costa Rica last year in a forum. In the other side, in South America, was published-in Reporte Brasil and Infobae- an opinion article named: Seen the difficulties of the EU-Mercosur Agreement, it’s convenient to see Canada? Worked by the international negotiation themes consultant and member of the Group of Producers Countries of the South (GPPS in spanish) Gustavo Idígoras with Sabine Papendieck and Pablo Elverdín. The article suggest more dynamism in the international negotiation between European Union and South America. The international negotiations between EU and Mercosur started in 1996, now Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) have a favorable economic and politic situation, are working to have the Customs Union. The Mercosur represents arround 25% of the importations of the European Union ($23 thousand millions approximately) the principle trade partner is Brazil, is the second provider of bovine meat to the European Union. For November in Brasilia and December is Brussels it’s the possibility to have new bilateral trade negotiations. Thus, the European Union as trade partner it’s very important to our development in the Americas, this strategic and diplomatic agreements could be a great cooperation and help to consecute the Social Development Goals of United Nations. ——— About the author: Mr Andree Cardona is an international Relations opinion columnist in Central America.          

By Jan Dop. Russell Advocaten is often asked by Embassies and Consulates what to do in the event of employee illness. In general, Embassies and Consulates employing local employees fall under Dutch law and are treated like any other employer in the Netherlands. Therefore, during the first two years of illness, you, as an employer, have several obligations with regard to the employee, such as: Maintaining the employment contract

• Continuing to pay wages of the employee
• Making efforts for the re-integration of the employee.

Prohibition against termination of employment during an employee’s illness You are not allowed to unilaterally terminate the employment contract with the sick employee during the first two years of illness. This prohibition does not apply in case of termination:

• During the probationary period
• With immediate effect
• With written agreement by the employee, and
• Due to business discontinuation.

Further, it is possible to ask the Judge to dissolve the employment contract due to personal reasons such as disfunctioning or culpable acting of the employee. The Judge has to deny the request in case it is related to the illness of the employee. A dismissal in breach with the prohibition against termination is subject to annulment. Requirement to continue to pay wages During the first year of absence from work due to illness you must continue to pay at least 70% of the employee’s wages and at least the statutory minimum wages. During the second year, you still have to pay at least 70% of the wages but you do not have to pay the statutory minimum wages any longer. If you do not continue to pay wages, the employee can enforce this in court, including an increase that can amount to half of the salary due. Re-integration obligation You are obliged to take care together with the employee that he or she will return to work as quickly as possible. If you do not make (sufficient) effort to achieve the re-integration of the employee, the term for continued payment of wages may be extended. Therefore, engage a company doctor or occupational health and safety service (‘Arbodienst’) and ask them to draw up a problem analysis within six weeks after the first date of reporting ill. Together with the company doctor or occupational health and safety service you then draw up an action plan specifying the arrangements regarding re-integration made between you and the employee. During the employee’s illness absence, make sure you will discuss the progress with the employee at least once every six weeks and plan a first–year evaluation after one year of sickness. If the employee is able to work, but only in a different position with changes to the working hours, or by means of training, you will have to explore the options together with the employee. If the employee cannot be re-integrated into your company, you will have to find out in good time whether the employee can re-integrate into another company, which is referred to as “second track” reintegration. Important: Make sure all re-integration efforts are laid down in writing! Obligations of sick employee However, in the event of long-term sickness of an employee the employee must make an effort for re-integration too. If the employee does not fulfil his or her obligations, and, for instance, postings on social media show that he or she is not that sick any longer or impedes re-integration, you can impose sanctions. More information Would you like to learn more about your obligations towards sick employees? We will gladly tell you what you may and may not do! Please contact Jan Dop of our Embassy Desk at jan.dop@russell.nl or by phone: +31 20 301 55 55.  ———– About the author: Jan Dop is partner and Head of the Embassy Desk at Russell Advocaten. He advises and represents corporations, entrepreneurs, HR departments, Embassies and Consulates in corporate and commercial matters.  

By Zlatko Hadžidedić. A few days ago Observer published a column under the title Putin-Proofing the Balkans: A How-To Guide, written by John Schindler. In this article the author advocates some new geopolitical redesigns of the Balkans which are actually far from being a novelty.  These ideas represent a pale copy of the ideas recently published by Foreign Affairs in the article under the title Dysfunction in the Balkans, written by Timothy Less, a former British diplomat who served as the head of the British diplomatic office in Banja Luka, the capital of the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as the political secretary of the British Embassy in Macedonia. Less advocates a total redesign of the existing state boundaries in the Balkans: the imagined Greater Serbia should embrace the existing Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also the entire internationally recognized Republic of Montenegro; the Greater Croatia should embrace a future Croatian entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina; the Greater Albania should embrace both Kosovo and the western part of Macedonia. All these territorial redesigns, says Less and Schindler agrees, would eventually bring about a lasting peace and stability in the region. It is easy to claim that both Schindler and Less are now only freelancers whose articles have nothing to do with their former employers’ policies. However, the problem is that certain circles within the foreign policy establishment in both Great Britain and the United States, in their numerous initiatives from 1990s onwards, have repeatedly advocated the very same ideas that can be found in these two articles, such as the creation of the imagined monoethnic greater states – Greater Serbia, Greater Croatia and Greater Albania – as an alleged path towards lasting stability in the Balkans, with Bosnia’s and Macedonia’s disappearance as a collateral damage. Of course, these ideas have always been spread below the surface of official policy, but they have never been abandoned, as the ‘coincidence’ of almost simultaneous appearance of Schindler’s and Less’s articles in the renowned mainstream magazines demostrates. Ostenstibly, the ideas advocated by Schindler and Less are rooted in the plausible presupposition that, as long as the existing nationalist greater-state projects remain unaccomplished, the nationalist resentment will always generate ever-increasing instability. However, the history has clearly demonstrated, both in the Balkans and other parts of the world, that such a presupposition is nothing but a simple fallacy. For, the very concept of completed ethnonational states is a concept that has always led towards perpetual instability wherever applied, because such ethnonational territories cannot be created without projection of extreme coercion and violence over particular ‘inappropriate’ populations, including the techniques which have become known as ethnic cleansing and genocide. The logic of ‘solving national issues’ through creation of ethnically cleansed greater states has always led towards permanent instability, never towards long-term stability. Let us only remember the consequences of the German ruling oligarchy’s attempt to create such a state in the World War II. And let us only try to imagine what the world would be like if their geopolitical project was recognized and accepted in the name of ‘stability’, as now Schindler and Less propose in the case of some other geopolitical projects based on ethnic cleansing and genocide. What is particularly interesting when it comes to ‘solving national issues’ in the Balkans is the flexibility (i.e. arbitrariness) of the proposed and realized ‘solutions’. First, the winners in the World War I, among whom the British and American officials occupied the most prominent positions, advocated the creation of the common national state of the Southern Slavs at the Peace Conference in Versailles. Then, more than seventy years later, Lord Carrington, the longest serving member of the British foreign policy establishment, chaired another international conference in The Hague where he oversaw the partition of that very state in the name of ‘solving national issues’ between ethnonational states which constituted it. Together with the Portugese diplomat, Jose Cutileiro, Lord Carrington then also introduced the first, pre-war plan for ethnic partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina (the Carrington-Cutileiro Plan), again in the name of ‘solving national issues’ between the ethnic groups living in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was eventually sealed, with some minor changes, at the international conference in Dayton. And now, here is yet another plan for fragmentation of the Balkan states, again in order to ‘solve national issues’. What is needed in addition is yet another international conference to implement and verify such a plan, and thus turn the Balkans upside-down one more time. Therefore it comes as no surprise that such a conference on the Western Balkans has already been scheduled for 2018 in London. Yet, how the proposed dismemberment of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, as well as the absorbtion of Montenegro into Greater Serbia, can be made politically acceptable to the population of the Balkans and the entire international community? What is required to accomplish such a task is a scenario that would make an alternative to dismemberment and absorbtion of sovereign states even less acceptable. It is not difficult to imagine that only a war, or a threat of war, would be such an alternative. However, its feasibility is limited by the fact that no state in the Balkans has the capacities and resources – military, financial, or demographic – to wage a full-scale war, and their leaders are too aware of this to even try to actually launch it. In such a context, the available option is to create an atmosphere that would simulate an immediate threat of war, by constantly raising nationalist tensions between, and within, the states in the region. Of course, such tensions do exist since 1990, but it would be necessary to accumulate them in a long-term campaign so as to create an illusion of imminence of regional war. Significantly, following the appearance of Less’s article, and simultanously with Schindler’s one, the tensions within Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia have begun to rise. This growth of tensions can hardly be disregarded as accidental, given the fact that the Balkan leaders can easily be played one against another whenever they receive signals, no matter whether fake or true, that a new geopolitical reshuffle of the region is being reconsidered by major global players. Since they are already well-accustomed to raising inter-state and intra-state tensions as a means of their own political survival, it is very likely that they will be able to accumulate such tensions to such a level as to gradually generate a mirage of imminent regional war. Also, a part of the same campaign is the systematic spread of rumours, already performed all over Europe, that a war in the Balkans is inevitable and will certainly take place during 2017. In the simulated atmosphere of inevitable war, a radical geopolitical reconfiguration of the entire Balkans, including dismemberment of the existing states proclaimed as dysfunctional and their eventual absorbtion into the imagined greater states, may well become politically acceptable.  All that is needed is to juxtapose this ‘peaceful’ option and the fabricated projection of imminent war as the only available alternatives, and offer to implement the former at a particular international conference, such as the one scheduled for 2018 in London. What is required for implementation of the proposed geopolitical rearrangement of the Balkans is to spread the perception that the permanent rise of political conflicts in the region inevitably leads to a renewed armed conflict. In that context, all the proposed fallacies about usefulness of geopolitical redesigns in the Balkans may easily acquire a degree of legitimacy, so as to be finally implemented and verified at the 2018 London conference on the Western Balkans. Of course, if that happens, it can only lead to further resentment and lasting instability in the region and Eastern Europe, and that can only lead to growing instability in the entire Europe. One can only wonder, is that a desired ultimate outcome for those who promote greater state projects in the Balkans as an alleged path towards its stability? ———– About the author: Graduate of the London School of Economics, prof. Zlatko Hadžidedić is a prominent thinker, prolific author of numerous books, and indispensable political figure of the former Yugoslav socio-political space in 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.