The Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 has been awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial, and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties.
- Berit Reiss-Andersen, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, announced the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize on October 7.
- The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries.
Berit Reiss-Andersen
- As per the Nobel Prize Website, Ales Bialiatski was one of the initiators of the democracy movement that emerged in Belarus in the mid-1980s.
- He founded the organisation Viasna (Spring) in 1996 in response to the controversial constitutional amendments that gave the president dictatorial powers and that triggered widespread demonstrations.
Human rights organisation Memorial
- The human rights organisation Memorial was established in 1987 by human rights activists in the former Soviet Union who wanted to ensure that the victims of the communist regime’s oppression would never be forgotten.
- Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and human rights advocate Svetlana Gannushkina were among the founders.
- After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Memorial grew to become the largest human rights organisation in Russia.
- It has been described as the largest human rights organisation in Russia, and in the present day, it helped in gathering information on “the political oppression and human rights violations in Russia”, as per the committee’s press release.
Center for Civil Liberties
- The Center for Civil Liberties was founded in Kyiv in 2007 for the purpose of advancing human rights and democracy in Ukraine.
- The center has taken a stand to strengthen Ukrainian civil society and pressure the authorities to make Ukraine a full-fledged democracy.
