Václav Havel Prize 2015 awarded to Ludmilla Alexeeva

The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, honoring outstanding civil society action in defense of human rights, was awarded this year to chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group Ludmilla Alexeeva.

As the Moscow Helsinki Group reports, the €60 000 prize was presented at a special ceremony today at the Palais de l’Europe in Strasbourg by PACE President Ann Brasseur, on the opening day of the autumn plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Ludmilla Alexeeva, now aged 88, is a veteran human rights defender in her native Russia. In her youth, she gave up a promising academic career to join the Soviet dissident movement, going on to become a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. Forced to emigrate to the US in 1977, she returned to Russia in 1989 to continue her work.

The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize is awarded each year by the Parliamentary Assembly, in partnership with the Václav Havel Library and the Charta 77 Foundation, to reward outstanding civil society action in defence of human rights in Europe and beyond.