Russia must be expelled from UN Security Council: Ukraine’s human rights activist after winning Nobel Prize

ALONA MAZURENKO – FRIDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2022, 15:28

Oleksandra Matviichuk, the head of the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, believes that the UN must expel Russia from the Security Council and set up an international tribunal in order to prosecute Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Lukashenko "and other war criminals", as Matviichuk put it.

Source: Matviichuk on Facebook

Quote: "Today the army speaks, as the voices of human rights activists were not heard in our region earlier. Maybe the UN Committee for Human Rights listened to us, but certainly not in those rooms where those in power make decisions.

If we do not want to live in a world where the rules are determined by the one with a stronger military potential, rather than by the rule of law, then the current state of affairs must be changed".

Details: Matviichuk is convinced that the UN and its member states must reform the international peace and security system in order to create guarantees for all countries and their citizens without regard to their military might or their participation or non-participation in military blocks.

Matviichuk thinks that Russia must be expelled from the UN Security Council for systematic violations of the UN Charter.

Quote: "The UN and its member states must solve the problem of the ‘responsibility gap’ and give hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes a chance to obtain justice…An international tribunal must be created in order to hold Putin, Lukashenko and other war criminals accountable".

Matviichuk also believes that common people have much more influence than they think: "If common people all over the world unite, their voice can change world history faster than UN intervention".

She also added that she is happy the CCL, which she heads, received the Nobel Peace Prize together with the partners from the human rights organisation Memorial from Russia and the human rights organisation Viasna from Belarus.

The CCL published a message of gratitude to the international community on its Facebook page after receiving the award.

The Center for Civil Liberties Organisation was founded in 2007 in Kyiv.

The organisation focuses on strengthening Ukrainian society and putting pressure on the authorities in order to make Ukraine a full-fledged democratic country.

After the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the CCL participated in detecting and documenting the war crimes of Russia against the civil population of Ukraine.

In 2017, Oleksandra Matviichuk received the Woman of Courage award from the US Embassy for her human rights activism.

Oleksandra also has her own column in Ukrainska Pravda. 

Previously: On 7 October, it was announced that the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Belarusian political prisoner Ales Bialiatski, the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, and the Russian human rights organisation Memorial.

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