Vladimir Erokhin, 3rd year International and European Law program student, The Hague University of Applied Sciences.
For me as for a third year LLB program student, the Peace Palace Library is indeed one of those places that are poetically called “temples of knowledge” – the place where you come to learn something new, to master your knowledge, to extend your future professional horizon. Even before I came to The Netherlands, the Peace Palace Library had become a sound argument in favor of choosing the Hague as a place to start my legal studies.
The Library provides a great foundation for research in many areas of international law. The materials provided by it helped me not only with my studies within my university program: the Peace Palace Library’s database had become a great basis that allowed me to be well-prepared for Willem C. Vis moot arbitration that I was honored to take part in as the Hague University of Applied Sciences team member. I am happy to have an opportunity to use the materials provided by the Library for my Year 3 paper as well as for my LLB thesis next year.
However, there is one more thing that makes this place special to me as a Russian. The Library is an inalienable part of the Peace Palace. The idea to create the Peace Palace takes us back to the time of the first Hague Peace Conference organized upon the initiative of Russian Tzar Nicholas II. From this perspective, visiting the Peace Palace library for me becomes the way of keeping in touch with my origins, the history of my country, remembering about the great influence that it had and still has on international level.