Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Human Rights Advocates from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was 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.

Chairperson of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo,Berit Reiss Anderson announced the name of the winners.
A Profile of Ales Bialiatski

Born on September 25, 1962, in Vyartsilya, Russia’s Karelia, Bialiatski was a resident of Belarus at the time of the award. Bialiatski was one of the initiators of the democratic movement that emerged in Belarus in the mid-1980s. He has devoted his life to promoting democracy and peaceful development in his home country. He founded the organisation Viasna (Spring) in 1996. Viasna evolved into a broad-based human rights organisation that documented and protested against the authorities’ use of torture against political prisoners. Government authorities have repeatedly sought to silence Ales Bialiatski. Since 2020, he is still detained without trial. Despite tremendous personal hardship, Mr Bialiatski has not yielded an inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus.