The first terminally ill child to be euthanised in the Netherlands since the assisted dying law was extended to children in 2024 was just one year old. According to the reports, that makes the child the youngest person in the world to have been euthanised.

Health Minister Sophie Hermans announced back in June that at the end of 2025 a child under 12 had been euthanised because of a severe illness, the first such case in the country. A new report by the committee that oversees late terminations of pregnancy and medically assisted death in children now confirms the child was "less than 24 months" old at the time of death.

The picture painted by the report is harrowing. The child was born prematurely, at 26 weeks of pregnancy, with severe complications: extensive brain damage and multiple infections that led to sepsis by the fourth month. At eight months, the child was diagnosed with West syndrome, a rare and severe form of epilepsy, as well as cerebral palsy. The seizures caused severe sleep disturbances, breathing problems, coughing fits and swallowing difficulties.

"During the child's short life there was no development or improvement whatsoever," the report says. After every medical and non-medical intervention, the parents and the doctor were convinced the child was suffering unbearably with no prospect of recovery. The parents asked the doctor to end the child's life, and the committee concluded that the doctor "acted with due care in those circumstances."

Prosecutors decided not to charge the doctor, after the review committee found he had acted in line with professional standards. "As a doctor you find yourself in an extremely vulnerable position, because something like this had never happened before. I still feel as if a sword of Damocles was hanging over my head for almost a year," he said.

The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalise voluntary euthanasia, in April 2002. Minors can request it from the age of 12 if they are able to judge what is best for them: children aged 12 to 15 need parental consent, while for 16- and 17-year-olds the parents must be involved but their consent is not required. Since 2024, the law has also allowed euthanasia for children under 12 if they are "terminally ill and suffering unbearably with no prospect of improvement," by joint decision of the doctor and the parents. Last year the Netherlands registered 10,341 cases of assisted dying, 3.8 percent more than the year before.

This is a story with no easy answer. The question it raises is universal and brutal: who has the right to say that suffering is unbearable when a child cannot say so itself? The Netherlands put its answer on paper, into law, with committees and checks. Are we in the Balkans even ready for a conversation like this?