Human rights organisations have criticised what they say is the Dutch authorities’ reluctance to deal with threats made against a foreign lawyer working in the Netherlands, the NRC said on Friday.

Nada Kiswanson provides information to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on behalf of Palestinian organisastions as part of investigations into potential war crimes by Israel. She has been receiving death threats since February.

Kiswanson, who is a graduate of Leiden University and has Lebanese and Swedish nationality, has received a number of phone threats at home warning her to stop her work.

When she first went to the police, she was sent away, the paper said. The foreign affairs ministry was also slow to respond to her request for help and did not write to her for two months.

Amnesty International and other human right groups want the government to set up a central reporting point for human rights activists who are threatened. The ICC is also calling for concrete measures.