This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was shared by the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties, Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski, and the Russian human rights organisation Memorial.
The Center for Civil Liberties is a human rights organisation led by Ukrainian lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk.
Who is Oleksandra Matviichuk?
Born on October 8, 1983, Oleksandra Vyacheslavivna Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human rights attorney. She is the head of the nonprofit organization The Center for Civil Liberties and a strong proponent for democratic reforms in her nation and the OSCE region.
Oleksandra Matviichuk graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 2007 with an LL.M. She was the first woman to participate in Stanford University’s Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program in 2017.
Matviichuk has been a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada’s Advisory Council under the Commissioner for Human Rights since 2012.
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She coordinated the Euromaidan SOS civic initiative following the violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrations on Independence Square in Kyiv on November 30, 2013. Euromaidan SOS’s mission was to provide legal assistance to Euromaidan victims in Kyiv and other cities throughout the country, as well as to collect and analyse information to protect protesters and provide interim assessments of the situation.
Matviichuk was nominated to the United Nations Committee Against Torture on June 4, 2021, becoming Ukraine’s first female candidate to the UN treaty body. She ran on a platform of limiting violence against women during times of conflict.
Between the Revolution of Dignity and 2022, she concentrated on documenting war crimes committed during the Donbas War. When she met then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2014, she advocated for more weapons support to help end the war.
Oleksandra Matviichuk received the Vasyl Stus Prize in 2007 for her “outstanding achievements in this field, clear civic position, and active presence in Ukrainian cultural space.” She is the award’s youngest winner in its history.
Also Read| What is Center for Civil Liberties?
Matviichuk was named a laureate of the Norwegian ‘Lindebraekke prize for democracy and human rights’ in 2015. Jan Petersen, the jury’s chairman and a former Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, explained why they were chosen: ‘It is important to support and honour those who participated in Ukraine’s democracy movement.’
For her “Exclusive contribution to promoting democracy and human rights,” Matviychuk received the first Democracy Defender Award from 16 OSCE delegations on February 24, 2016.
Matviichuk was then named Ukraine‘s Woman of Courage 2017 by the U.S. Embassy in honour of “her continuous and fearless dedication to safeguarding rights of Ukrainian people.” She and her Center for Civil Liberties were among the Right Livelihood Award winners in September 2022 for their work supporting democratic institutions in Ukraine and pursuing war crime punishment.
