Nobel Laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk "Ukraine: A Difficult Path to Freedom"

Date: 

Thursday, February 9, 2023, 5:00pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

Tsai Auditorium (S-010), CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA

Oleksandra Matviichuk, Ukrainian human rights lawyer, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, a non-profit organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 

Moderator: Emily Channell-Justice, Director, Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, HURI

In Person and Online

Register for Zoom (This event is the keynote address for our conference, "Rebuilding Ukraine, Rebuilding the World," but you are welcome to attend the address even if you do not participate in the rest of the conference.)

Watch on YouTube or attend in person (Tsai Auditorium, S-010, CGIS South).

Oleksandra Matviichuk keynote address February 9, 2023

About the Speaker

Oleksandra Matviichuk Oleksandra Matviichuk is a Kyiv-based human rights lawyer and civil society leader. She leads the non-profit human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Award in Oslo in 2022, and also coordinates the work of the initiative group Euromaidan SOS. The activities of the Center for Civil Liberties are aimed at protecting human rights and establishing democracy in Ukraine and the OSCE region. The organization develops legislative changes, exercises public oversight over law enforcement agencies and judiciary, conducts educational activities for young people and implements international solidarity programs. Its “Tribunal for Putin” initiative has documented 27,137 war crimes committed by Russians since February 24, 2022.

The Euromaidan SOS initiative was created in response to the brutal dispersal of a peaceful student rally in Kyiv on November 30, 2013. During the Revolution of Dignity, several thousand volunteers provided round-the-clock legal and other aid to persecuted people throughout the country. Since the end of the protests and beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the initiative has been monitoring political persecution in occupied Crimea, documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity during the hybrid war in the Donbas, and conducting the “LetMyPeopleGo” international campaign to release political prisoners detained by the Russian authorities.

Matviichuk has experience in creating horizontal structures for massive involvement of people in human rights activities against attacks on rights and freedoms, as well as a multi-year practice of documenting violations during armed conflict. She is the author of a number of alternative reports to various UN bodies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court. In 2016, she received the Democracy Defender Award for "Exclusive Contribution to Promoting Democracy and Human Rights" from missions to the OSCE. She received the 2017 Ukraine’s Woman of Courage Award from U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch, the Hillary Rodham Clinton Award, and the 2022 Right Livelihood Award. Matviichuk was named one of the top 25 most influential women in the world by The Financial Times.

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