This year, Harvard’s European Conference featured several keynote speakers and panel discussions focusing on Ukraine. Divchata attended several.
We were particularly moved by a keynote address given by Oleksandra Matviichuk, a human rights defender who works in Ukraine and the OSCE region. In 2022 Matviichuk was awarded the Right Livelihood Award and recognized as one of the 25th influential women in the world by Financial Times. The same year the Center for Civil Liberties, which Oleksandra Matviichuk leads, received the Nobel Peace Prize. At present, Matviichuk heads the human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties and coordinates the work of the initiative group Euromaidan SOS. At the Conference, Matviichuk spoke about the importance of documenting war crimes and holding criminals accountable today, thus ending the cycle of impunity that has allowed Russia to continue perpetrating war crimes in Syria, Georgia, Chechnya, other countries – and now Ukraine.
Matviichuk also spoke about how critical women’s work is in Ukraine today. Check out some of Matviichuk’s address on our Instagram, here.
