NOBEL PEACE PRIZE LAUREATE OLEKSANDRA MATVIICHUK CANADIAN SPEAKING TOUR

Nobel Peace Prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk has been documenting Russian war crimes in Ukraine for 10 years, since the occupation of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.  Her centre has documented thousands of war crimes in the last two years alone, since the full-scale invasion in February 2022.  She has become the face and voice of resistance and human dignity, leading the international effort to try the perpetrators of crimes against humanity – from the Crime of Aggression to the systematic murder of civilians, to the state abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children in an effort to erase their Ukrainian identity or train them into “cannon fodder” for the Russian war machine.

She attended Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, graduating in 2007 when she was conferred a LL.M. specializing in human rights law. She started working for the non-profit Centre for Civil Liberties upon its founding in 2007, when it was established. In 2012, she became a member of the Advisory Council under the Commissioner for Human Rights of Ukraine’s parliament. In 2017, she became the first woman to participate in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program of Stanford University. Since October 2022, she has been Vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). Her honours include, inter alia:

·       2022 – Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Center for Civil Liberties
·       2022 – Right Livelihood Award
·       2017 – “Ukrainian Women of Courage” Award from the U.S. Embassy
·       2016 – Democracy Defender Award, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly
·       2015 – “Sjur Lindebrække Prize for Democracy and Human Rights”, Aawarded by the Norwegian political party Høyre
·       2007 – The Vasyl Stus Prize, Ukrainian Center of PEN International