Center for Civil Liberties

Center for Civil Liberties, Ukrainian organization that promotes democracy and civil society. The organization won (with Ales Bialiatski and Memorial) the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2022.

The Center for Civil Liberties was founded in Kyiv in 2007 by the leaders of human rights organizations from nine former Soviet countries in an attempt to create a cross-border resource center. Its formal mission is “The establishment of human rights, democracy, and solidarity in Ukraine and the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] region for the affirmation of human dignity.” More generally, the organization works to buttress civil society and further the rule of law in pursuit of full-fledged democracy in Ukraine.

It undertook that pursuit during a tumultuous period in Ukraine’s history when the country shifted from Moscow toward the West, especially after the Maidan uprising of 2013–14, which led to the fall of Pres. Viktor Yanukovych. It began documenting human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that were committed by the Yanukovych regime during that uprising and extended that monitoring to abuses committed by Russian-backed forces in Crimea, during events leading to the region’s annexation by Russia, and in eastern Ukraine, when conflict erupted there in 2014. The organization has also mapped the disappearance of activists and journalists in Ukraine since 2014. Its efforts to document war crimes and human rights abuses only intensified after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Center for Civil Liberties is led by Oleksandra Matviychuk, who received the Democracy Defender Award from the OSCE in 2016.