Albright to join board of The Hague institute

Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright is to take up a job in The Hague. De Volkskrant newspaper reports that Albright will sit on the supervisory board of a new research and academic institute, provisionally named the Institute for Global Justice.

Working closely with Leiden University, the institute is to offer a prestigious degree course in the field of peace, justice and international security. Detailed plans for the institute are to be announced next month.

Madeleine Albright served as the United States' first woman secretary of state during Bill Clinton's second term as US president (1997-2001) and is currently in The Hague to present a UN report about legal empowerment. According to a spokesperson for The Hague mayor Jozias van Aartsen, Albright has personally confirmed her partaking in the new institution. Van Aartsen knows Albright because he was foreign minister of the Netherlands from 1998 until 2002.

In recent years The Hague has been increasingly profiling itself internationally as a world peace and justice capital. The city is home to dozens of organisations dealing with international law, including the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Europol, the European Union's criminal intelligence agency.