The Integrity Talks

The entire country is discussing the unacceptable behavior of Dutch presenter Matthijs van Nieuwkerk. These examples of unacceptable behavior are similar to what I have experienced in my working life – a couple of times in different settings. In fact, this is why I did not pursue Dutch journalism in the traditional sense long-term, even…

New Zealand wants to lower the voting age to 16. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced an amendment to the law to make this happen. The change comes after the Supreme Court ruled that a voting age of 18 is discriminatory and violates the human rights of young people, The Guardian reports. A group of…

Research done by TNO shows some alarming facts on bullies at work in the Netherlands. 8% of all employees have dealt with bullying at work. These employees miss seven days per year more from work than employees who are not victimized. Many of those people deal with serious health issues. At the beginning of my career,…

In the past year, a business relation of mine, not even a closed one for that matter, got attacked publicly by a so-called integrity expert. His reputation got ruined. He was warned against and called a charlatan and snake (amongst other things). Business-wise, I assume that there must have been some ground to point him…

New South Wales, Australia, passes a new law and makes coercive control a stand-alone offense. It is the first Australian state to do this. Yeah! The Netherlands should do the same. I cannot believe how slow the Netherlands is at adopting the right legislation to literally save lives. That is why I support what Mark…

Magic Lane launches a groundbreaking platform in intelligent, compact and privacy-friendly Maps, Location & Navigation services including software development kits (SDK’s). With this, the company officially enters the European market. The platform combines the large amount of qualitative map and data sources with smart algorithms. This allows companies, for example in cycling and micro-mobility, to…

Be a lady, they said… Since we are talking about the major payment gap between men and women in the Netherlands, let’s talk about the rest as well. A must-watch:

Learning from mistakes is the main reason why my friend Robert Fink, also known as Zoltan, wrote his autobiography. Robert Fink travelled the world and wrote about his experiences in his book called Almost romances while travelling the world, published by Europe Books. Robert Fink had his craziest years during the pandemic, almost as if…

Minister Karien van Gennip of Social Affairs and Employment and Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf of Education, Culture and Science wrote a letter to the parliament about the so-called Multi-Year Plan for Self-Determination 2022-2025 to work on a change of mentality within closed-up communities and to increase the basic financial skills of women in dependency situations. In…

And it goes on and on and on and on… … Eleven former or serving French bishops have been accused of sexual violence, including the former bishop of Bordeaux, who has confessed to assaulting a minor 35 years ago. Jean-Pierre Ricard, a long-standing bishop of Bordeaux who was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2016, has…

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk issued an open letter to Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer at Twitter, urging him to “ensure human rights are central to the management of Twitter”. The letter follows reports of the sacking of Twitter’s entire human rights team and all but two of the ethical AI team…

In the Netherlands, we believe that everyone should be themselves. And that everyone can fully participate in society without infringing one’s right to self-determination. Unfortunately, for many people that is not yet the case. A large group of Dutch people, mainly women, have to deal with coercion when it comes to all kinds of choices…

Integrity procedures have acquired the status of a kind of pseudo-judicial system, but without the guarantees thereof, say Janny Dierx and Rob van Eijbergen in Dutch newspaper NRC. The integrity industry has degenerated into a people-oriented. This opinion piece is very much worth the read. Source: NRC.

Since I started the conversation, I need to follow up on it, I thought after publishing my story about Bessel van der Kolk and Zomergasten. A story that received wonderful responses via email and social media. I wrote: “There are even moments in which I wonder if I have repressed something, or if I don’t…

In the past year, I have been following the developments around the reformed school Gomarus in Gorinchem, the Netherlands. Now, the school is about to compensate two former students financially because they forced the two girls to stay in a room in school against their will in 2016. Moreover, the school forced the girls to…

Jolene Hettinga-Zagers (34) wordt directeur van EmpowerYou, een bureau op het gebied van loopbaanvragen, coaching, outplacement, re-integratie tweede spoor en UVW en training. Het bureau heeft als doel om professionals op de arbeidsmarkt te verbinden en in hun kracht te zetten, zodat ze wendbaar zijn en de snelle veranderingen op de arbeidsmarkt kunnen bijbenen. Hettinga-Zagers…

The Netherlands is fourth in the world ranking for children’s rights, the KidsRights Index 2022. The two biggest problems children in the Netherlands deal with are air pollution and long waiting lists in youth care, the children’s rights organization KidsRights said in the tenth edition of its ranking. KidsRights looks at how countries protect five…

Oliver Yeboah wordt CEO Blueplates, een online platform dat taxichauffeurs zonder eigen wagen koppelt aan auto’s die gedeeld worden. Recentelijk won het bedrijf de Taxi Innovatie Prijs 2022 voor de duurzame, milieuvriendelijke en toekomstbestendige oplossing om auto’s aan chauffeurs te kunnen koppelen. Eerder was Yeboah pastoor. Hij maakte in de afgelopen paar jaar een uitzonderlijke…

Recently, I had a 1:1 with God. The motivation was a piece about Bessel van der Kolk and Zomergasten that I published on BNNVARA, Joop in which I spoke about repressed traumas. That got me thinking about my very last detox round. Was detoxing still necessary, or did I already reach the finish line?  Because…

The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience published a fascinating research on the effect of hierarchy on moral behavior. In fact, the findings were a personal confirmation. The research underlines that if there is a lot of hierarchy within an organization, that it is easier to commit harmful actions. The explanation is that agency and empathy are divided…

More and more organizations are taking their integrity policy seriously. Appointing an integrity manager plays a central role within organizations. The House for Whistleblowers (Huis voor Klokkenluiders, HvK) has defined a profile to educate and meet expectations. Integrity is an important topic for organizations. Employers are expected to take the necessary integrity measures, such as…

Tibetan Buddhism is also market by scandals, sexual abuse and other forms of coercion. Not many people think of the Buddhist community when it comes to these matters. That is why I highly recommend you to watch the French documentary called La loi du silence, so The law of silence. Excellent production and so needed…

The New York Times presents an extraordinarily strong portrait of the Hasidic, or Jewish ultra-Orthodox communities in New York and how secular education is kept out of their schools. Closed-up communities that are more than familiar to me, including the applied forms of physical and mental coercion, the abuses in which one plays one’s own…

With great interest, I watched the three-hour Zomergasten broadcast with psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. Growth from trauma is a central theme in my life. Moreover, I find this one of the most fascinating themes of all time, which will never bore me. Two major discussions were taking place in the public debate, namely about…

Janine Janssen en Catrien Bijleveld komen met een Basisboek geweld in de levensloop, theorie voor de praktijk. Janine Janssen komt ook met een tweede boek. Samen met Erik Nicolai schreef ze Verliefd, verloofd, getrouwd, gescheiden; Familie-eer en het recht bij het starten en verbreken van relaties. Met een lezing neem ik deel aan de boeklancering.…

More women than men have been appointed as supervisory board members of listed companies in the Netherlands. This is a first as concluded by the Female Board Index 2022. An annual record is made of the male-female ratio in listed companies. 85 new commissioners were appointed this year. 55 percent were women. 89 Dutch companies…

Social media are ubiquitous in today’s society. The anonymity of posts seems to foster blaming others and falsely accusing individuals. The study presented in the article ‘The online platform as a megaphone‘ investigates posts on online platforms that address female and male professionals, including politicians, mayors, lawyers and scholars. The researchers made comparisons between the…

It is the week of criticism on women, due to a dancing Prime Minister from Finland, Sanna Marin, and due to discussions about why there are still too little women sitting at the table in Dutch talk shows and other broadcasts. Apparently, we still live in an infantile phase of representation. The whole world reflects…

In Australia, coercive control – in other words a severe form of psychological violence and restriction of freedom – is now punishable by law. Offenders can face up to seven years in prison. Various educational programs are also being launched to better understand how these mental forms of coercion actually work. In France, mental forms…

Hilko Timmer has come up with this excellent visual to understand experiential knowledge and experience experts even better. The only thing I would like to add is that this model should be fluid, similar to the waterfall model versus the V-model, to indicate agile technological development.

A shocking Dutch report by Unraveling Research & Advice on the abuses in the triathlon sport was made public. The nature and scale of the problems in triathlon have been way more serious than thought in the past 15 years. Social safety and transgression between 2007 and 2021 was a big topic indeed. The Dutch…

Australia’s state and territory attorney-generals have agreed to create a national plan to address coercive control after meeting with federal counterpart Mark Dreyfus. “A stain on our national soul,” said the prime minister of Australia. Perpetrators could face seven years’ of jail time under the New South Wales coercive control laws. When is the Netherlands going…

Research done by InnerBody concludes that California is the healthiest state of America in 2022. It has the fittest residents. InnerBody Research marks California at the top, mostly because due to its low smoking rate and high number of fitness and health locations. Colorado comes in second and Utah third. West Virginia comes in last.…

UN Human Rights Council’s landmark new policy document on girls’ and young women’s activism is an important step towards making sure that they are recognized as drivers of change. Moreover, that they have the space to safely, equally and meaningfully make their voices heard. Girls and young women advocate on the front lines of movements for social…

Recently, I wrote about how it is time for a massive mea culpa from religious leaders. Now, I read about the mea culpa from Pope Francis towards the indigenous children in the Canadian boarding schools. The pope called what happened to those children genocide. Yet, many believe that words are just words and that the…

Dutch lawyer Johan Oosterhagen has been researching abuses in women’s prisons for over 1.5 years. He also spoke about it with the Minister of Legal Protection, called Franc Weerwind. On the back of that conversation, the Justice and Security Inspectorate (‘Inspection’) has now announced that an investigation will follow to find out how much of…

European Institute for Gender Equality, the EIGE’s latest report on coercive control and psychological violence across the EU Member States states that almost one in two women in the EU have experienced psychological violence. In the midst of that, increased criminalization measures are starting to be put in place. The Dutch government, for example, will provide a…

Boys and girls are not allowed to sit next to each other on a bench in Kerala, India. Source: based on many media outlets, including Opindia. It reminds me of the pertinacious, ultra-Orthodox rules in Israel that are so familiar to me… There were many incidents of moral policing in the past weeks. Boys and…

Never in history has a Jewish Orthodox leader stood up and declared: mea culpa for the suffering we inflicted on individuals – especially women – through our power structures and age-old, all-important, religious rules. Mea culpa for short-term suffering in life, for example caused by a lack of self-determination. And mea culpa for long-term suffering…

India elects the first president from the country’s tribal communities. Droupadi Murmu, a 64-year-old teacher turned politician, will be the second woman to hold the largely ceremonial role as head of the republic when she takes office at the start of a five-year term. More than 4500 state and federal lawmakers voted in the presidential…

A new study shows that the experience of racial discrimination affects the microstructure of the brain, as well as increasing the risk for health disorders. The study, led by Negar Fani, PhD, Emory University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Atlanta, GA, USA, appears in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, published by Elsevier. Racial discrimination is…

The summer is magic! Een zomerproject in samenwerking met podcast De Nieuwe Knikkers – Payments, Loyalty & Retail en deze twee leukers: Arlette Broex en Gertjan Rösken. Weet jij het nog? Hoe gedraag je je nu het beste op de werkvloer? In gesprek met Dina-Perla Portnaar. Deze keer een speciale summer edition met food for thoughts. Iets om over na te denken…

The board of different Dutch student bonds decided to stop hazing. According to diverse investigations, different disputes were guilty of massive assault and humiliation. Awareness and drastic culture change must be stimulated in the coming period, also around the culture of keeping silent. In fact, more student bonds are putting consequences in place, not just…

It’s a mistake to think problematic aggression is limited to those with psychiatric disorders. Healthy people have the capacity for impulsive violence – and resulting “morally” poor behavior. Traditionally, moral development has been facilitated by social institutions such as religion, education and societal convention. But technology could change this. If scientists could identify the predictors…

On 3rd June 1992, Dutch Minister of Interior Affairs called Ien Dales gave a speech and pleaded for more integrity within public administration. In the years that followed, integrity was also explicitly on the agenda within the private sector. Exactly thirty years after Dales’ plea, Edgar Karssing, professor of Philosophy, Professional Ethics and Integrity Management…

Most people work with some men who care about gender equity and creating an inclusive workplace and society. Workplace sexism is an issue that men are committed to combating. Moreover, men likely understand how they and society benefit when they challenge sexism. They are confident in their ability to do so. When they hear a…

Een oplossing voor uitdagingen in de zoektocht naar goed personeel ligt binnen handbereik. Volwaardige diensten van een recruitmentbureau kunnen tegen een lagere prijs per maand dan het salaris van een recruiter worden geboden. Growth Busters vult namelijk de huidige, groeiende wervingsbehoefte in Nederland in door middel van moderne automation-technieken en data gedreven aanpakken. Meestal is…

“Legal reforms should not weaken human rights protections in the United Kingdom”, said the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, following a five-day visit to the country (27 June to 1 July), which focused on the system for human rights protection, the situation in Northern Ireland and children’s rights. The proposed repeal…