The Center for Civil Liberties ( uk, Центр Громадянських Свобод, Tsentr Hromadyansʹkykh Svobod) is a Ukrainian

human rights organization A human rights group, or human rights organization, is a non-governmental organization which advocates for human rights through identification of their violation, collecting incident data, its analysis and publication, promotion of public awareness ...

led by the Ukrainian lawyer

Oleksandra Matviichuk Oleksandra Vyacheslavivna Matviichuk ( uk, Олександра В’ячеславівна Матвійчук; born 8 October 1983) is a Ukrainian human rights lawyer and civil society leader based in Kyiv. She heads the non-profit organization ...

. It was founded in 2007, with the purpose of pressuring Ukraine's government to make the country more democratic. The organization was awarded the 2022

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolog ...

, jointly with

Ales Bialiatski Ales Viktaravich Bialiatski ( be, Алесь Віктаравіч Бяляцкі, Alieś Viktaravič Bialiacki; born 25 September 1962) is a Belarusian pro-democracy activist and prisoner of conscience known for his work with the Viasna Human ...

and Russian organization Memorial.

History

Center for Civil Liberties was founded in

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

on 30 May 2007. The organization is engaged in introducing legislative amendments in an attempt to make Ukraine more democratic and to improve the public control of

law enforcement agencies A law enforcement agency (LEA) is any government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws. Jurisdiction LEAs which have their ability to apply their powers restricted in some way are said to operate within a jurisdiction. LEA ...

and the judiciary. One of the organisation's focuses is the updating of the

Criminal Code of Ukraine The legal system of Ukraine is based on the framework of civil law, and belongs to the Romano-Germanic legal tradition. The main source of legal information is codified law. Customary law and case law are not as common, though case law is of ...

. At the time of the 2013—2014 Euromaidan protests the group started the Euromaidan SOS project to provide legal support to protesters who took part in the Euromaidan protests and to monitor abuses done by then-president

Viktor Yanukovych Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych ( uk, Віктор Федорович Янукович, ; ; born 9 July 1950) is a former politician who served as the fourth president of Ukraine from 2010 until he was removed from office in the Revolution of D ...

's security forces. After the

2014 Russian annexation of Crimea In February and March 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. This event took place in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity and is part of the wider Russo-Ukrainian War. The events in Kyiv th ...

and the start of the

War in Donbas War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

(also in 2014) the organization started documenting political persecution in

Crimea Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...

and crimes in the territory controlled by the Russian-backed separatist

Luhansk People's Republic The Luhansk or Lugansk People's Republic (russian: Луга́нская Наро́дная Респу́блика, Luganskaya Narodnaya Respublika, ; abbreviated as LPR or LNR, rus, ЛНР) is a disputed entity created by Russian-backed ...

and Donetsk People's Republic. The organization also started international campaigns for the release of illegally imprisoned people in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

, Russian-annexed Crimea and Donbas. Following the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. ...

Center for Civil Liberties also started to document

Russian war crimes Russian war crimes since 1991 are the violations of the law of war, including the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Geneva Conventions, consisting of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of genocide, which the official ar ...

committed during the war. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said in 2022 that the organization was "playing a pioneering role in holding guilty parties

accountable Accountability, in terms of ethics and governance, is equated with answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and the expectation of account-giving. As in an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the ...

for their

crimes In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...

". On 7 October 2022 Center for Civil Liberties was awarded the

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretariat; The global monkeypo ...

, jointly with

and Russian organization Memorial. This was the first ever Nobel Prize awarded to a Ukrainian citizen or organization. At the time of a 8 October 2022 press conference Center for Civil Liberties head

admitted that neither

Ukrainian President The president of Ukraine ( uk, Президент України, Prezydent Ukrainy) is the head of state of Ukraine. The president represents the nation in international relations, administers the foreign political activity of the state, condu ...

Volodymyr Zelenskyy Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, ; russian: Владимир Александрович Зеленский, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Zelenskyy, (born 25 January 1978; also transliterated as Zelensky or Zelenskiy) is a Ukrainian politicia ...

nor any other (Ukrainian) government official had congratulated Center for Civil Liberties on winning the Nobel Prize. Matviichuk said that they might have tried but could have been unsuccessful because she and her colleague "were just returning from a business trip." In November 2022 Oleksandra Matviichuk called for countries to provide Ukraine with weapons to liberate the occupied territories in Ukraine as the best way to stop the long-lasting crimes being committed by the Russian Federation.

Name

According to the organization's statute, the organization's full name is Centre for Civil Liberties Civil Society Organisation and the abbreviated denomination is Centre for Civil Liberties. On its web site, the organization mostly calls itself Center for Civil Liberties.

Notes

References

External links

* * {{2022 Nobel Prize winners 2007 establishments in Ukraine Political organizations based in Ukraine Human rights organizations based in Ukraine Organizations awarded Nobel Peace Prizes Ukrainian Nobel laureates