Kharkiv human rights group received the Lev Kopelev Award

Kharkiv Human Rights Group is awarded for its work in the field of human rights

Frankfurt am Main/Cologne/Kharkiv, 14 June 2024 – On 9 June 2024 in Cologne, the Ukrainian human rights organisation Kharkiv Human Rights Group (HHG) was awarded the Lev Kopelev Prize. The International Society for Human Rights (IGFM) warmly congratulates the organisation on receiving the award. ISHR closely co-operates with the Kharkiv Human Rights Group in the framework of the Voices of War project.

The Lev Kopelev Prize was awarded in Cologne on 9 June 2024. The Lev Kopelev Forum has been awarding the prize since 2001. It is named in honour of the writer and humanist Lev Kopelev. This year’s nominee was the Ukrainian people, represented by paramedic Yulia “Tyra” Paivska, the Klitschko brothers and the Kharkiv Human Rights Group.

The Kharkiv Human Rights Group and ISHR are partner organisations. KHPG is the oldest human rights group in Ukraine and was founded in 1988 to defend human rights. Since a full-scale Russian attack on 24 February 2022 turned the whole of Ukraine into a war zone, KHPG has been documenting facts and evidence of violent crimes against the people of Ukraine. Their goal is to find the perpetrators of war crimes and bring them to justice. PPC works closely with ISHR as part of its Voices of War project. ISHR supports the project by providing translations of the project’s interviews and publishing them on its website as well as on social media.

On 18 October 2023, the staff of the ISHR Frankfurt office had the opportunity to meet and talk personally with Yevhen Zakharov, Chairman of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, in Frankfurt am Main. Eugene Zakharov himself is a long-standing member of ISHR-Ukraine and attended the annual general meeting of the German section in 1995 at the invitation of ISHR.