All posts by Dina-Perla

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.…

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved ~ George MacDonald To see the patterns is to see the solutions, children’s and human rights How can we break open closed-up communities all around the world and protect children from hurt? Listen to Dina-Perla’s heartfelt personal story on child abuse, harmful traditional practices, healing…

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 Dutch 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 compaired the contents…

It is the week of criticizing 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 on…

Coercive control – in other words, a severe form of psychological violence and restriction of freedom – is now punishable by law in Australia. 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 people thought in the past 15 years. Social safety and transgression between 2007 and 2021 was a big topic indeed. The…

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 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. After…

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 Dutch 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 have 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…

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 it increases 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…

The summer is magic! Een zomerproject in samenwerking met podcast De Nieuwe Knikkers – Payments, Loyalty & Retail en 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 als je…

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 is 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…

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 datagedreven aanpakken. Meestal is Growth…

“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…

Despite self-conceptions, Canada is far from the best when it comes to children’s rights. A 2020 UNICEF report card measuring the well-being of children and youth in wealthy countries ranked Canada 30th out of 38 nations. And unbeknownst to many, Canada has an exemption in their Criminal Code, Section 43, that permits parents to hit their children. Read…

Four in ten (43%) British adults say their understanding of coercive control is poor or non-existent, according to a new study commissioned by Vodafone and domestic abuse charity Hestia as part of a campaign to raise awareness and provide support to anyone affected. The campaign, called ‘It’s Not Nothing’, has been created by Vodafone Foundation and aims to…

The revision of the EU Consumer Credit Directive is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to regulate BNPL in the same way as other forms of credit. CEO of Tinka Charly Toni believes this opportunity must not be missed. Regulating Buy-Now-Pay-Later in Europe: if something looks like credit, smells like credit, tastes like credit – it is credit.…

The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) has identified serious abuses at a medium-sized slaughterhouse in the province of Utrecht. For example, an employee has been caught bulling animals by stepping on them, hitting and kicking them. The business process has been stopped and the so-called slaughterhouse accreditation has been suspended. It is…

We hear more and more about transgressive behavior in the world of sports, in other words, about abuse in top sport. From gymnastics to hockey and judo. Likewise, from physical and verbal abuse to sexual abuse. Read this interesting article and have a look at the documentary called the Gouden Lichting via broadcast VPRO.

United Nations: The UN human rights chief has termed the US Supreme Court ruling that overturned the constitutional right to abortion as a massive blow to women’s human rights and gender equality, as UN agencies warned that restricting access to abortion does not prevent people from seeking it but simply makes it more deadly. In…

Intellectual humility affects how people make moral decisions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the results of a cross-cultural experiment published in The Journal of Positive Psychology. “Research on humility has been on the rise. However, I wanted to focus on topics where people tend to get rather entrenched and situations where people may have…

Family honor and law in starting and ending relationships Op 8 september vindt bij Avans Hogeschool de presentatie plaats van het boek ‘Verliefd, Verloofd, Getrouwd, Gescheiden: Familie-eer en het recht bij het starten en verbreken van relaties’. De presentatie wordt gegeven aan de Onderwijsboulevard in Den Bosch. Het boek is tot stand gekomen in opdracht…

In 2021, as UNICEF celebrated its 75th year, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to reverberate around the world. The compounding impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict and climate change have had, and continue to have, a devastating impact on child poverty, and its effects will be felt for many years. 2021 estimates suggest that…

Researchers, policymakers and industry should involve children and their caregivers when designing new policies and initiatives dealing with artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies. This is the main recommendation of a recently published JRC report on Artificial Intelligence and the Rights of the Child. Artificial intelligence-based internet and digital technologies offer children many opportunities but, if not properly…

Human Rights Council 50th Session – panel discussion on menstrual hygiene management, human rights and gender equality Excellencies, friends, I am pleased to address you on a topic the Human Rights Council is discussing for the very-first time. In the last decade, a vibrant and diverse menstrual movement has emerged across the world. This movement…

Around the world, education is in crisis. Not only COVID-19 and its fallouts, but also a rise in armed conflicts worldwide, is destroying hope for millions of children. That’s why restoring access to education took top priority for War Child in 2021. The annual report shows how they have taken learning far beyond the classroom,…

Adequate housing is a right of every person — regardless of age, gender, race, or income level — and is the foundation for all human development, well-being and survival, as recognized by Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or UDHR. As a leading global organization committed to adequate housing for all, Habitat has collaborated with the…

The dramatic real-life effects of internet shutdowns on people’s lives and human rights have been vastly underestimated, the UN Human Rights Office warns in a new report issued. The report urges states not to impose internet shutdowns. “Too often, major communication channels or entire communication networks are slowed down or blocked,” the report states, adding that…

Muel Kaptein, professor of business ethics at RSM Erasmus University, may be our Dutch diva of integrity and compliance. He worked really hard and accomplished a lot throughout the years. Recently, he shared his body of work in the Journal of Business Ethics. A clear overview: 1998: Twelve Gordian knots when developing an organizational code…

The Minister for Legal Protection, also on behalf of the Minister of Justice and Security and the State Secretary for Health, Welfare and Sports, has prepared a research report with the title: ‘Towards a separate criminalization of psychological abuse? Pros and cons. The report was sent to the House of Representatives, by the Open University…

Human rights due diligence allows companies to proactively manage potential adverse human rights impacts, thus unsafe and unhealthy working conditions for workers, child labor and forced labor. They are involved in those, either through their activities or through its operations, products or services by its business relationships. According to the Office of the United Nations…

Half of Americans in a new Gallup poll say that they would rate the overall state of moral values in the U.S. as poor, a record high, according to the survey giant. The poll found that 50% of the respondents rate the state of moral values in the country as being poor, while 37% rate it as…