A group of Iranian students and scholars will appear before the Palace of Justice in The Hague on Thursday to seek legal action against the Dutch government.

By Vessela Evrova

Since July 2008, the government of the Netherlands has passed legislation that prevents Iranian nationals and Dutch nationals of Iranian descent from enrolling in certain graduate programmes at Dutch universities. The law also designates five locations as being ‘off limits’ to these students and researchers in order to secure ‘proliferation sensitive’ information from being accessed or passed on.
 

The claimants are arguing that this constitutes unjustified discrimination and contravenes Dutch law.
 

Behnam Taebi is a spokesperson for the Iranian scholars and students seeking to further their research in disciplines involving nuclear technology. He says the new legislation contravenes Dutch law: “The measure proposed by the Dutch government is against the first article of the Dutch constitution which says that you are not allowed to discriminate on unsound grounds, and discrimination based on nationality is one of those unsound grounds”.
 

The Dutch government says by passing the legislation, it is simply fulfilling its responsibilities under international law, specifically, UN Security Council Resolution 1737 (2006), which asks all UN member States to prevent specialized training of Iranian nationals on their territories that could potentially contribute to Iran’s ‘proliferation sensitive’ nuclear activities.
 

Taebi does not question the legality of the Resolution but says that “the Dutch government is the only [government] around the world which is proposing such a categorical exclusion of people based on nationality”.
 

The ban is directed at a “minimal percentage of students for specific parts of specific studies, not whole graduate programs”, spokespersons for the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, and is a statement “against the State of Iran and its nuclear policy, rather than Iranian nationals”.