Liesbeth Zegveld is a Dutch lawyer, legal expert and professor. Zegveld grew up on the island of Goeree-Overflakkee. After her law studies at the University of Utrecht she obtained a doctoral degree cum laude in 2000. She received several awards for her doctoral thesis Accountability of Armed Opposition Groups in International Law. In 2000, she was sworn in as a lawyer; and in 2005, she became a partner at Prakken d'Oliveira Human Rights Lawyers. At this law firm, Zegveld heads the InternationalLaw & Human Rights department, where her cases mainly focus on liability for violations of human rights and compensation for victims of war. Between 2006 and 2013, Zegveld was a professor at Leiden University, where she lectured on international humanitarian law, in particular on the rights of women and children during armed conflict. She has been professor of war reparations at the University of Amsterdam since the end of 2013. Liesbeth Zegveld is a member of the Dutch Human Rights Watch committee and former member of the Committee on Reparation for Victims of Armed Conflict within the International Law Association and a member of the Netherlands Society for International Law. Zegveld is well known for her work on the Srebrenica case, where she represented the relatives of two of the Bosnian victims of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. Before the Dutch courts, Zegveld asserted that Dutchbat – the Dutch battalion responsible for the protection of the Srebrenica enclave – and the Dutch government knowingly exposed Muslims to the enemy. In 2013, the Dutch Supreme Court accepted the claim. In 2011, Zegveld represented nine widows in a case against the Dutch State for its involvement in the Rawagede massacre of 9 December 1947, during which their husbands were killed. Following a judgment by the Court of The Hague, the State decided to settle the matter, publicly apologising for its involvement and paying €20.000 in compensation to every widow. In 2011 and 2013, Zegveld represented family members of victims of the Videla-regime in Argentina, who reported Jorge Zorreguieta to the Public Prosecution Service for his role in the regime. Zegveld also represented the victims of chemical attacks during the Iraq-Iran war in the eighties in a case against Frans van Anraat, a Dutch businessman, who sold materials to produce chemical weapons to the Iraqi regime during the war. All victims were granted €25.000 in damages. Another high-profile case was that of Azhar Sabah Jaloud, who was fatally shot at a Dutch checkpoint during the Iraq War in 2004. On behalf of the young man's father, Zegveld started a case against the Dutch State, which resulted in a successful complaint against The Netherlands before the European Court of Human Rights. On behalf of the Dutch trade union FNV and a Bangladeshimigrant worker, Zegveld held the FIFA accountable for the mistreatment of migrant workers who prepare the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Zegveld is currently representing the families of the Moluccan train hijacking in 1977 at the Punt in a case against the Dutch Government. In July 2018, the Court of The Hague found that the Dutch State did not act unlawfully. An appeal in the case is pending. In 2018, Zegveld and her client persuaded Nederlandse Spoorwegen to pay compensation to survivors and relatives of those transported by trains to Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War.
