Svetlana Aleksejevna Gannusjkina, right, leader of the independent Russian human rights organisation Grazjdanskoje Sodestvije (Civic Assistance Committee) today received the Sakharov Freedom Award from the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC). Gannusjkina also leads the IDP and refugee programme of the organisation Memorial´s human rights centre (29-NOV-08)

Based on NHC´s information material produced for the award ceremony and reception, this article has been translated and written, edited and prepared for publication here by HRH F / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

Born in 1942, Gannusjkina was educated to become a mathematician. She lives in Moscow, and taught at one of Moscow´s universities until year 2000. She is a member of the Russian President´s commission for civil society and human rights. Since the eighties, she has engaged herself in human rights issues, and gradually ever more in the problems related to forced migration caused by the unrest and wars that have taken place in many part of the former Soviet Union.

In 1990, Gannusjkina established the Civic Assistance Committee, and worked with refugees and IDPs from the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Today, Civic Assistance Committee has a network of 58 offices, all giving humanitarian and legal aid to refugees and IDPs in 46 Russian regions. Four of these centres are located in the Chechen Republic, and Gannusjkina are among the Russian human rigts defenders who have worked on the violations happening in North Caucasus.

In the early nineties, Gannusjkina was also one of the founders of memorial´s humanrights centre. Today, this centre is among the most important human reights organisations in Europe. In the autumn of 2006, Gannusjkina featured on top of the ´death list´ for a nationalist website in the Russian Federation, and one of her colleagues; Bula Tsjilajev, disappeared in the Chechen Republic in april 2006. There is reason to fear that he has been killed by Russian security forces.

Gannusjkina has received the UNHCR´s Nansen award in 2004, on behalf of Memorial´s human rights centre, and People in Need Foundation´s Homo Homini-award for 2007. NHC has cooperated closely with Gannusjkina, Civic Assistance Committee and Memorial for many years, and knows her as a remarkably engaged, knowledgeable and brave colleague.