Oleksandra Vyacheslavivna Matviichuk heads the Nobel Prize Winning Ukrainian non-profit organization: The Center for Civil Liberties. She describes their work since the beginning of Russian aggression in 2014, the 18,000 human rights violations and atrocities documented in Ukraine so far, and their goal, together with a wide network of Ukrainian and international organizations and volunteers, of documenting every individual case in the country. She expresses a need to confront and bring to justice Russian terror inflicted deliberately on civilians to gain submission, a military tactic that they have recently used with impunity, in various countries.

Matviichuk frames the war in Ukraine as a struggle over democracy or authoritarianism, and calls for the restoration of civil society and justice, pointing out the problem of processing so many cases of human rights violations. She describes how she is seeking to establish an international tribunal of crimes against humanity to bring justice for Ukrainians and prevent future wars of terror in the region.

Trigger warning: this program addresses topics of extreme violence, torture, kidnap, murder, and rape.

Oleksandra Matviichuk earned her law degree from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and became the first woman to participate in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program of Stanford University. In 2007, Matviichuk was awarded the Vasyl Stus Prize for 'outstanding achievements, and in 2015, she became a laurate of the Norwegian 'Lindebrække prize for democracy and human rights' and in 2016, 16 delegations to the OSCE recognized Matviychuk with their first Democracy Defender Award for 'Exclusive contribution to promoting democracy and human rights'. The U.S. Embassy to Ukraine recognized Matviichuk as Ukraine's Woman of Courage 2017 for 'her constant and courageous dedication in defending rights of Ukrainian people'. In 2021, Matviichuk was nominated to the United Nations Committee Against Torture and made history as Ukraine's first female candidate to the UN Treaty Body. She ran on a platform to limit violence against women and conflict. Since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, she has focused on documentation and prosecution of war crimes. She met with Vice President of the United States Joe Biden in 2014, and advocated for more support to help end the Russian war against Ukraine.