T4P Member Organization Awarded 2022 Nobel Peace Prize

On October 7, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the laureates of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. The recipients are International Memorial, Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, and the Center for Civil Liberties—a Ukrainian human rights organization that became one of the founders of the T4P (Tribunal for Putin) initiative in March 2022.

The Nobel Committee noted that the laureates have made “an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses, and abuses of power.”

Ales Bialiatski is the founder of the “Viasna” human rights center, one of the most influential organizations defending human rights in Belarus. Due to political repression, the organization cannot operate legally in the country. Bialiatski himself has been imprisoned since 2021.

Memorial traces its origins to the dissident movement in the Soviet Union. One of the organization's founders is Andrei Sakharov, the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, which is also a founder of T4P, was established as the Kharkiv branch of Memorial and effectively remains the “Ukrainian Memorial.” The group’s director, Yevhen Zakharov, has been a board member of International Memorial since 1994.

In 2021, Russian courts liquidated “International Memorial” and the “Memorial” Human Rights Center as legal entities. The creation of a “New International Memorial” is currently underway.

Following the announcement of the Peace Prize laureates, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Head of the Board of the Center for Civil Liberties, called for a reform of the system of international peace and security.

“If we do not want to live in a world where the rules are determined by whoever has a more powerful military potential, rather than by the rule of law, this state of affairs must be changed,” Oleksandra Matviichuk wrote on Facebook. The Center for Civil Liberties received the award on the eve of her birthday, becoming the first Nobel laureate from Ukraine.

In 2021, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the Russian newspaper “Novaya Gazeta.” Due to its refusal to call the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “special operation” rather than a “war,” the publication was forced to cease operations in Russia.

Amid the war in Ukraine, Dmitry Muratov announced the sale of his Nobel medal. The 103.5 million raised at auction is being directed to help Ukrainian child refugees and their families.