Oleksandra Matviichuk is a human rights lawyer, and head of the Center for Civil Liberties that works to defend freedom and human dignity in Ukraine and the OSCE region. She has experience in creating horizontal structures for massive involvement of people in human rights activities against attacks on rights and freedoms, as well as a multi-year practice of documenting violations during armed conflict. She is the author of a number of reports to various UN bodies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court. Together with other partners she created the ‘Tribunal for Putin’ initiative in order to document international crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in all regions of Ukraine, including the occupied territories. In 2016 she received the Democracy Defender Award for ‘Exclusive Contribution to Promoting Democracy and Human Rights’ from OSCE. In 2017 she became the first woman to participate in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program of Stanford University. In 2022 she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament and recognized as one of the 25th influential women in the world by Financial Times. In 2022 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for the work of her organization the Center for Civil Liberties. In 2025 she received the Dutch Auschwitz Award. In 2026, she was named an Honourable Member of European Order of Merit by European Parliament, an honor recognizing her significant contribution to European integration and the protection of European values.

Where, in your opinion, is the most interesting research and discussion happening in your field?

The most interesting research in my field is happening not in academic halls, but where law encounters a reality that does not yet have a name. When the full-scale invasion began, part of my team and I stayed in Kyiv to continue our work. Then the war took the form of a column of Russian tanks trying to encircle my city. But several years have passed, and this is now a different war. This is a war of unmanned systems, mass drone attacks, the use of AI, complete transparency of the battlefield, and rapid weapons of mass destruction. All previous experience turned out to be irrelevant. In our database, which already counts more than a hundred thousand episodes of Russian crimes, the share of drone attacks on the civilian population is growing. This practice has been called a “human safari”. Russian drones purposefully hunt people on bicycles, families in civilian cars. My colleagues worked on a case where a Russian drone struck two-year-old Dmytryk, who was simply playing in his yard. The operator clearly saw that it was a child but directed the drone at the boy anyway. If such things are already becoming the norm when drones still require a human, then what awaits us when AI fully controls these drones?

How has your understanding of the world changed over time, and what (or who) caused the most important shifts in your thinking?

Truthfully, I have rethought a lot over these years. Previously, for me, war was the collapse of civilization. Unfortunately, I have come to understand that war is part of life. And the fact that for three decades I was lucky enough to live in at least relative peace still means nothing. Security is not a given. And very many people in different parts of the world know this from their own experience. The situation will only get worse. The international system, founded on the UN Charter and international law, is broken. It was created after World War II to prevent mass violence. Yet even my smartphone has an expiration date, while this system has never been reformed. So it is not surprising that the International Committee of the Red Cross notes a rapid increase in the number of armed conflicts worldwide. A similar situation........

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