Biography

Since July 2004, Jaap E. Doek is emeritus professor of Law (Family and Juvenile Law) at the VU University (Vrije Universiteit) in Amsterdam.
He is a member of the International Board of Trustees of the African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) since 2004; a member of the International Supervisory Board of Child and Youth Finance International (CYFI) since 2012; a member of the Supervisory Board of Helpline International (CHI) since 2014; a member of the Advisory Board of Plan The Netherlands (2008); a member of the Advisory Committee of the ‘Innocenti Research Centre’ of UNICEF (since 2006) in Florence ; a member of the expert committee for the selection of candidates for the Annual Children’s Peace Prize since 2006 (initiative of KidsRights, The Netherlands).
Since 2014 he is the special legal advisor of ECPAT and chairperson of the Inter-Agency Working group on the ECPAT Project on terminology in the field of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children.
He is also a consulting editor for Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal and of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Mental health & Social Justice.
Prof. Doek has been an advisor/consultant for, among others, the Special representative on Children and Armed Conflict, the regional office of UNICEF for East and Southern Africa and is still active as a consultant for a number of UNICEF country offices ( e.g. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Nepal and Suriname) and some governments of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Prof. Doek was a member of the ‘UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’ (1999 – 2007) and a chairperson of that Committee (2001-2007), the General Rapporteur of the Third World Congress on Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents held in Rio de Janeiro 26 – 28 November 2008 and a member of the Editorial Board for the UN Study on Violence against Children (2003 – 2006).
He was the chairperson of Aflatoun Child Savings International ( 2006 – 2014) an International NGO social and financial education for children.
From 2008 – 2013 he was a member of the jury for the Human Rights Defenders Tulip Award established by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.

He also held the position of professor of Juvenile Law at the University of Leiden (1999 – 2004) and was the Dean of the Law Faculty at the Vrije Universiteit (1988 –1992).
From 1978 to 1985, he was a juvenile court judge in the district court of Alkmaar and The Hague and from 2005 – 2012 a deputy justice in the Court of Appeal of Amsterdam. From 1982 to 1986, he was a member of the Board of the International Association of Juvenile and Family Court Magistrates. In 1999-2000 he was the president of the ‘European Law Faculties Association’ (ELFA).
In 1993 he was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law School in Washington DC and at the Michigan University School of Law in Ann Arbor. In the spring of 1999 he was a visiting professor at the North Western University School of Law in Chicago.
In July 2014 he taught a course on International Children’s Rights at the Oxford University as part of the Masters of International Human Rights Law.

Prof. Doek is a founding member of the ‘International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect’ (ISPCAN). From 1976 to 1992, he held various positions in the Board of that organisation, including President (1982 – 1984) and Vice President for developing countries (1984 – 1992). In that capacity he was involved in the establishment of the ‘African Network for Prevention and Protection of Child Abuse and Neglect’ (ANPPCAN).
He was also involved in the creation of ‘Defence for Children International’ (DCI) and established the Dutch section of this organisation. He has been a member of an ISPCAN/DCI working group on Child Labour which conducted a large study on Child Labour (1994-1997).

In 1996, Prof. Doek received the Distinguished Service Award from the ISPCAN and the C. Henry Kempe Lectureship in 2006. In 2005 he received the International Social Justice Award from the ‘Ambedkar Center for Justice and Peace’ in India and in 2007 the ‘Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award’ of the Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Virginia USA).
In 2008 he received the International Forum of Child Welfare (IFCW) Distinguished Service award at the IFCW’s International Forum in Cardiff.
In 2012 he received from the International Juvenile Justice Observatory (IJJO) the Juvenile Justice Across Borders award. In the same year the University of Leiden and DCI the Netherlands established an annual national prize for the best Master Thesis on Children’s Rights named after Prof. Doek .

Prof. Doek has published numerous books and articles on various topics in the area of children's rights and family law in national (Dutch) and international (English) journals.

Last modified: January 2015