Photo: Ukranian Helsinki Human Rights Union

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The motivation for the 2023 grant is:

Candidate of Sciences Tetiana Pechonchyk has founded the Zmina Human Rights Information Centre. Ever since Russia’s invasion of Crimea 2014 Zmina energetically and successfully documented the invading power’s abuses and acts of cruelty together with the devastation the war has caused. Her early understanding of the importance of documenting the crimes against men and mankind that Russia has committed and commits in Ukraine will be of great help for the international criminal court which as soon as possible ought to be established to take legal proceedings against those responsible. The task to verify the crimes requires many individual efforts, which are physically and mentally trying. We include all these efforts in the choice of Tetiana Pechonchyk as the receiver of the grant of 2023.

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The regulations of the Anna Dahlbäck’s Memorial Fund state that the fund annually awards a grant to a person who “makes contributions in the spirit of Anna Dahlbäck”, that is to say a person who committedly and courageously devotes him/herself to human rights. This year the board has taken as a starting-point Anna Dahlbäck’s work as a human lawyer, which was particularily concentrated on war crimes and genocide. Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine has unavoidably become focused. The most fundamental human right is to be able to live the life. The war against Ukraine constitutes a crime against this right, a crime that moreover includes a number of transgressions of the law as torture and rape, as well as transgressions of the international laws of warfare.

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Stockholm 24 March 2023, 
The Board
 

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