This year the award ceremony was to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the Universal Human Rights Declaration signing.
The award was given out in three nominations: the best human rights defender, Raman Kisliak, lawyer, Pavel Sapelka, and journalist, Aleh Hruzdzilovich of Radio Liberty (photo right). These people, according to the Alliance, contributed the most to the implementation of human rights standards in Belarus this year.
It is worth mentioning that this year laureates, Raman Kisliak and Pavel Sapelka, are the alumni of the first stage of the Bring International Standards Home project within the International Law in Advocacy program, an educational project of the HRH Network.
In 2008 Barys Zvozskau, the president of Vilnius HRH, a lawyer Tamara Sidarenka and a Naša Niva journalist Siamyon Pechanko collected the award.
Liudmila Hraznova, a head of Human Rights Alliance, noted that the award has a symbolic value and it should foster positive developments and productive activities in the human rights field.
This year’s laureate Raman Kisliak shared with the Belarusian HRH press-service his hopes and expressed several concerns.
Do you think that awards of this kind promote the human rights problematics, particularly, in Belarus?
Certainly, this kind of events and awards do quite a good job in promoting the human rights as a field in Belarus. In my opinion, it is especially important that accomplishments in the human rights work are recognised not only for HR defenders but also for journalists and professional lawyers. Their work is also essential in defending human rights. And the fact that Human Rights Alliance awarded journalists and lawyers along with HR defenders makes this prize even more valuable.
And for you, personally, is this year’s award an act of recognition or is it rather a symbolic gesture?
One of the particular cases mentioned at the award ceremony was the case of Inha Abramava, whose individual complaint was registered by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in 2009. The work on this case had been in progress since 2007. And that was why the registration for this relatively new for us procedure was a very pleasant moment. Obviously, it was also pleasing that the Alliance recognised our work in general.
Do you connect your success with the HRH program Bring International Standards Home, from which you and another laureate Pavel Sapelka graduated? Was this educational program useful for your work?
As far as I know that my work with several cases on the death penalty was also amongst reasons to give me the award. Human rights work in such difficult and complicated cases is impossible without the close cooperation of HR defenders, professional lawyers and experts in the international field of human rights.
And the Bring International Standards Home program made this cooperation feasible. Undoubtedly, it was very important that the joint work was effective and had success in the process of dealing with particular cases.
