The EU- west Papua Project

  Maria is a law student from Poland specialising in International and European law.  She has completed an LL.B. Global Law and currently is pursuing an LL.M. in European Law and Global Risk at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.  Her main areas of interest are European human rights law, anti-discrimination law, labour law, and migration law. Currently, she  is working part-time in a Dutch law firm advising and helping Polish clients.  In future she hopes to contribute to human rights, equality law and social policy at the national and European level and her goal is to ensure better access to justice and legal aid to disadvantaged groups.

"During the summer internship at Solon Law I conducted research on the ‘The Right to Self-determination in European Court of Human Rights case law’.  My research focused on how the Strasbourg Court interprets the right to self-determination of peoples, what is the scope of such a right, how and whether it is clearly defined by the Court and whether there are exceptions to the right. In brief, it tries to consolidate the Court’s stance on the application of the right to self-determination of peoples within the Member States to the Council of Europe. Overall, it has been an amazing opportunity to intern at Solon Law as I was able expand my knowledge on ECtHR case law and further study the Convention system.  Furthermore, it has been a great honour to be supervised by Dr. Eve Sariyannidou, from whom I have received very valuable feedback on how to conduct research and critically analyse jurisprudence.

 My hope for the West Papua is that the democratic right of West Papuans to determine their own future is respected at the international level."