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De Balie: Hawija-slachtoffers vs. de Nederlandse staat
In December 2025, PAX was invited to speak at an event hosted at De Balie (Amsterdam) and organized by the Nuhanovic Foundation. The event focused on how a range of actors - civil society, legal professionals, media, academics - have sought accountability for a Dutch airstrike on Hawija, Iraq, in 2015, which caused at least 85 civilian casualties and caused widespread damage to the surrounding area.
PAX has been working on the Hawija case since 2019, when Dutch media exposed the Netherlands' involvement in and responsibility for the airstrike. Together with societal partners, PAX in 2022 published a detailed report on the direct and reverberating impacts of the strike on civilians, and in 2025 on the limitations of Dutch accountability efforts so far as perceived by survivors.
PAX Project Lead Erin Bijl highlighted this work and ongoing challenges faced by survivors in the De Balie event, alongside other speakers like a survivor of the airstrike and human rights lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld.
