CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk is one of the keynote speakers for the 14th Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture on November 24, 2024 at the Cape Town International Convention Center. She heads the human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. She is recognized for her work documenting war crimes in Ukraine, embodying the courage to bear witness in times of crisis.
Here is the full text of her keynote speech:
I am a human rights lawyer, and for many years, I have been applying the law to protect people and human dignity. I have often heard that freedom and human rights are important, but economic benefits, geopolitical interests, and security concerns are even more significant. The fault of this approach is that freedom and peace are inextricably linked. States that grossly violate human rights pose a threat not only to their own citizens but to security and peace in general.
One clear example is Russia, which destroyed its own civil society step by step. But for a long time, the world turned a blind eye to this. Unpunished evil grows. Russian military committed terrible crimes in Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Syria, Mali, Libya. They have never been punished for it. Russia believes they can do whatever they want. And now as a human rights lawyer I am in a situation where the law does not work.
Russian troops are destroying residential buildings, churches, museums, schools, and hospitals. They are shooting at the evacuation corridors. They are torturing people in filtration camps. They are forcibly taking Ukrainian children to Russia. They ban the Ukrainian language and culture. They are abducting, robbing, raping and killing in the occupied territories. The entire UN system of peace and security cannot stop it.
Let me share with you the story of 10-year-old boy Illya Matviyenko from Mariupol. Russian troops surrounded the city and did not allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to open the green corridor and evacuate civilians. Hence, Illya and his mother hid in the basement of their house from the Russian shelling. Like many people in the city, they melted snow to have water and made fires to cook at least some food. When the supplies ran out, they were forced to go out and consequently they became exposed to shelling.
His mother was wounded in her head, and the boy’s leg was torn. With the last of her strength, his mother dragged her son to a friend’s apartment. There was no medical assistance. Prior to this, the Russians destroyed the maternity hospital and the entire medical infrastructure in Mariupol. That is why in the apartment they lay down on the couch and just hugged each other. They were lying like that for several hours. This 10-year-old boy told to my colleague that his mother died and froze right in his arms.
I have one question. How we people, in the 21st century, will defend human beings, their lives, their freedom and their dignity? Can we rely on the law – or does only brutal force matter?
It is important to understand this not only for people in Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Nicaragua or Sudan. The answer to this question determines our common future.
1. There is no peace without justice.
War turns people into numbers. The scale of war crimes grows so fast that it becomes impossible to recognize all the stories. That why it is important to tell them. This is the story of 62-year-old civilian Oleksandr Shelipov. He was killed by the Russian military near his own house. The tragedy received huge media coverage only because it was the first court trial since large-scale war. In the court, his wife Kateryna shared that her husband was an ordinary farmer, but he was her whole universe and now she’s lost
everything.
People are not numbers. We must ensure justice for all, regardless of who the victims are, their social position, the type and level of cruelty they’ve endured, and if the international organizations or media is interested in their case. We must return people their names. Because the life of each person matters.
2. Occupation is just another form of the war
I work with people who went through hell. Let me assure you that people in Ukraine dream about peace. But peace does not come when the country which was invaded stops fighting. That is not peace, that´s occupation. And occupation is the same war, but just in another form.
Occupation is not about changing one state flag to another. Occupation means enforced disappearances, torture, rapes, denial of your identity, forcible adoption of your own children, filtration camps, and mass graves.
This is a story of children writer Volodymyr Vakulenko. He wrote beautiful stories for children and entire generations grew up with his “Daddy’s book”. During the Russian occupation, Volodymyr disappeared. His family hoped to the last that he was alive and, like thousands of other Ukrainians, was in Russian captivity. But when Ukrainian army liberated his region we found mass graves in the forest. In the unmarked grave under number 319 we found the body of murdered children writer. II know his family. It is difficult for them to accept the results of the identification.
There is no legitimate reason for doing this. There is also no military necessity for it. Russians did these horrific things only because they could.
3. We need to reform the international system of peace and security
I don’t know how historians in the future will call this historical time. The world order, based on the UN Charter and international law, is collapsing before our eyes. The UN system, created after the Second World War established unjustified indulgences for individual countries. The work of Security Council is paralyzed. Now fires like wars will occur more and more frequently in different parts of the world because the international wiring is faulty and sparks are everywhere.
Russia started this war not in February 2022, but in February 2014. This was just after the Revolution of Dignity when millions of people in Ukraine had bravely stood up against a corrupt authoritarian regime. They took to the streets across the entire country. They peacefully demonstrated just for a chance to build a country where rights of each person are protected, government is accountable, judiciary is independent, and police do not beat students peacefully demonstrating.
When the authoritarian regime fell, Ukraine got its chance for democratic transformation. And to stop us on this way Russia invaded. Russia occupied Crimea and eastern regions in 2014, and then in 2022 expanded this war into a full-scale invasion. Because Putin as every dictator is afraid of the idea of freedom.
That’s why it is not a war between two states. This is the war between two systems – authoritarianism and democracy. Putin wants to convince the entire world that democracy, human rights and the rule of law are fake values. Because they do not protect anyone in the war. Putin wants to convince that a state with a powerful military potential and nuclear weapons can break the world order, dictate its rules to international community and even forcibly change internationally recognized borders.
If Putin succeeds, it will encourage authoritarian leaders in various parts of the world to do the same. Governments will be forced to invest money not in education, health care, culture or business development, not in solving global problems such as climate change or social inequality, but in weapons. We will witness an increase in the number of nuclear states, using AI as a method of the war, the emergence of robotic armies and new weapons of mass destruction. If this scenario comes true, we will find ourselves in a world that will be dangerous for everyone without any exception.
4. We are losing freedom in the world
Half of the population in the world this year goes to elections. But don’t be in the illusion. More than 80% of people around the world live in not-free or partially free societies. This means that people who have the right to vote for whom they want, to say what they think, to love whomever their hearts tell them to love, and to choose freely to whom gods they want to pray are in the minority.
The problem is not only that the space of freedom in authoritarian countries has narrowed to the size of a prison cell. The problem is that even in democracies, people starting to call into question the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
There are reasons for this. The coming generations inherited democracy from their parents. They began to take human rights for granted. They have become consumers of democracy. They understand freedom as possibility to choose between different cheeses in the supermarket.
Yet, the truth is that freedom is very fragile. Human rights are not attained once and forever. We make our choice every day.
5. People can change the history
I have been working with the law for many years, and I know for sure that if you cannot rely on legal mechanisms, you can always rely on people. We are used to thinking in categories of states and interstate organizations. But ordinary people have much more impact than they can even imagine. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things.
I would never wish anyone to go through war experience. Nevertheless, these dramatic times provide us an opportunity to reveal the best in us – to be courageous, to fight for freedom, to take the burden of responsibility, to make difficult but right choices, to help each other. Only when we are helping each other, we are acutely aware what does it mean to be a human.
And I am here to say that despite everything, the story of Ukraine is life-affirming story, because these are dramatic times that raise hope. When freedom is denied, it starts to powerfully break out through the concrete individuals.
I am here to say that in different countries worldwide in this concrete moment many people also fight for freedom and human dignity. Sometimes this fight may seem to be senseless because they face with enormous opposing power. However, the total history of humankind convincingly proves that we should not give up. Even, when we have no tools, our own words and our own position always remain. Eventually, it is not so little.
And let me finish with the words of Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”.
We are fighting for freedom that has no limitation in national borders. As well as human solidarity. Our future is unclear but not prewritten. Nevertheless, we still have a chance to fight for the peaceful democratic future we wish for ourselves and our children. – Rappler.com
