A Plea for Humanity
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to one individual and two organizations. I wrote about this prize, and its recipients, in a piece several weeks ago — here. The prize was handed out on December 10, in a ceremony at Oslo City Hall. I have written two posts about this event. The first concerns Ales Bialiatski, the Belarusian democracy activist and political prisoner. The second concerns Memorial, the great (and banned) civil-society and human-rights organization in Russia.
Bialiatski and Memorial are two of the laureates, two of the prize’s recipients, as you know. The third is the Center for Civil Liberties, in Kyiv. The center’s executive director is Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian human-rights lawyer. I interviewed her in early October, a few days before the 2022 prize was announced. She was in New York, participating in a session of the Oslo Freedom Forum. For our interview, go here.
At the Nobel ceremony on Saturday, she spoke for the organization, the Center for Civil Liberties. Her lecture included the following sentence: “We are proud of having the Ukrainian language heard during the official ceremony for the first time in history.” (The Nobel prizes began in 1901.)