Protection of human rights and freedoms is a key issue for our century — Oleksandra Matviichuk

The issue of protecting human rights and freedoms is a key one in the 21st century, and the global community needs to use all available tools to address it.

This was stated by Oleksandra Matviichuk, Head of the Center for Civil Liberties, human rights lawyer, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2022, at the Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting "The Future Is Decided in Ukraine", organised by YES in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

“The main question of our century is how will we defend human beings? Their rights, their freedoms and their human dignity? Can we rely on the law or just instead on weapons? To defend the rights of people in occupied territories, that answer is to provide weapons to be able to defend ourselves,” — mentioned Oleksandra Matviichuk. 

She believes that Russia is trying to convince the world that democracy and freedom are not real values by unleashing this war.

“To remind, it is not Ukraine only to solve this question of the century. It is on the international community. Russia tried to convince the whole world that democratic human rights are fake values,” stressed Oleksandra Matviichuk.

The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate is convinced that Russia must be stopped as soon as possible to preserve peace in the world.

“If we don't restore the international order, if we don't stop Russia and demonstrate fairness and justice, it will have negative consequences for the whole world. We could find ourselves in a version of the future where the world will be dangerous for everyone, without exception,” — Oleksandra Matviichuk summed up.