Oleksandra Matviichuk

The Fragility of Freedom.

Oleksandra Matviichuk is a human rights lawyer, head of the Center for Civil Liberties that works to defend freedom and human dignity in Ukraine and the OSCE region. She 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 reports to various UN bodies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court.

After the beginning of Russian full-scale invasion, Matviichuk together with other partners created the ‘Tribunal for Putin’ initiative in order to document international crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in all regions of Ukraine, including the occupied territories.

In 2016 she received the Democracy Defender Award for "Exclusive Contribution to Promoting Democracy and Human Rights" from OSCE. In 2017 she became the first woman to participate in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program of Stanford University. In 2022 Oleksandra Matviichuk was awarded with the Right Livelihood Award, the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament and recognized as one of the 25th influential women in the world by Financial Times. In 2022 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for the work of her organization the Center for Civil Liberties. In 2025 she received the Dutch Auschwitz Award.

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As part of the MCI Opening of the Academic Year