Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, sometimes known by his initials MBK, is an exiled Russian businessman, oligarch, and opposition activist, now residing in London. In 2003, Khodorkovsky was believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, with a fortune estimated to be worth $15 billion, and was ranked 16th on Forbes list of billionaires. He had worked his way up the Komsomol apparatus, during the Soviet years, and started several businesses during the period of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in the mid-1990s, he accumulated considerable wealth by obtaining control of a number of Siberian oil fields unified under the name Yukos, one of the major companies to emerge from the privatization of state assets during the 1990s.
Human rights in Uzbekistan have been described as "abysmal" by Human Rights Watch, and the country has received heavy criticism from the UK and the US for alleged arbitrary arrests, religious persecution and torture employed by the government on a regional and national level. Amnesty International stated that freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly continue to be restricted, and that relations between gay men are illegal.
Memorial is an international human rights organisation, founded in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union to study and examine the human rights violations and other crimes committed under Joseph Stalin's reign. Subsequently, it expanded the scope of its research to cover the entire Soviet period.
Russia has consistently been criticized by international organizations and independent domestic media outlets for human rights violations. Some of the most commonly cited violations include deaths in custody, the systemic and widespread use of torture by security forces and prison guards, the existence of hazing rituals within the Russian Army —referred to as dedovshchina — as well as prevalent breaches of children's rights, instances of violence and prejudice against ethnic minorities, and the targeted killings of journalists.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza is a Russian-British political activist, journalist, author, filmmaker, and political prisoner. A protégé of Boris Nemtsov, he is vice-chairman of Open Russia, an NGO founded by Russian businessman and former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in Russia. He was elected to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition in 2012, and served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016. He has directed two documentaries, They Chose Freedom and Nemtsov. As of 2021, he acts as Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He was awarded the Civil Courage Prize in 2018.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a non-profit organization that focuses on promoting and protecting human rights globally, with an emphasis on closed societies. HRF organizes the Oslo Freedom Forum. The Human Rights Foundation was founded in 2005 by Thor Halvorssen Mendoza, a Venezuelan film producer and human rights advocate. The current chairman is Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, and Javier El-Hage is the current chief legal officer. The foundation's head office is in the Empire State Building in New York City.
Freedom of assembly in Russia is granted by Article 31 of the Constitution adopted in 1993, where it states that citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets. In practice, the right to freedom of assembly is restricted by Russian authorities. According to a Russian law introduced in 2014, a fine or detention of up to 15 days may be given for holding a demonstration without the permission of authorities and prison sentences of up to five years may be given for three breaches. Single-person pickets have resulted in fines and a three-year prison sentence.
Lev Aleksandrovich Ponomaryov is a Russian political and civil activist. He is an executive director of the all-Russian movement "For Human Rights." He is a member of the Federal Political Council of Solidarnost, and was deputy to the State Duma in its first period.
Hillel C. Neuer is a Canadian-born international lawyer, writer, and the executive director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO and UN watchdog group based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Lyudmila Mikhaylovna Alexeyeva was a Russian historian and human-rights activist who was a founding member in 1976 of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group and one of the last Soviet dissidents active in post-Soviet Russia.
The Durban Review Conference is the official name of the 2009 United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), also known as Durban II. The conference ran from Monday 20 April to Friday 24 April 2009, and took place at the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland. The conference was called under the mandate of United Nations General Assembly resolution 61/149 with a mandate to review the implementation of The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action from the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance which took place in Durban, South Africa.
Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, having been appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. After serving her term as ambassador, Donahoe was appointed as Director of Global Affairs for Human Rights Watch. In 2014, she was also appointed to the board of International Service for Human Rights. She is also an affiliate of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, a center of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at the Freeman Spogli Institute's Cyber Policy Center working at the intersection of governance, technology and human rights.
Elena Servettaz is a Russian French journalist and a news anchor at Radio France Internationale, where she covers international relations and French and Russian politics, with an emphasis on the Russian opposition movement and high-profile political cases, including those of Sergei Magnitsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Alexei Navalny and Pussy Riot. She is also the Paris correspondent for the Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy.
Vian Dakhil is a current member of the Iraqi parliament. She is the only Yazidi Kurd in the Iraqi Parliament.
Open Russia is a political organisation founded by the exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky with the shareholders of his firm, Yukos. Khodorkovsky states that his organisation advocates democracy and human rights. The first initiative took the form of a foundation whose stated purpose was to "build and strengthen civil society in Russia", established in 2001. Khodorkovsky relaunched Open Russia in September 2014 as a nationwide community platform as part of a group of activities called "Open Media".
The Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy is an annual human rights summit sponsored by a coalition of 20 non-governmental organizations. Each year, on the eve of the United Nations Human Rights Council's main annual session, activists from around the world meet to raise international awareness of human rights situations.
Boris Nemtsov, a Russian politician opposed to the government of Vladimir Putin, was assassinated in central Moscow on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge at 23:31 local time on 27 February 2015. An unknown assailant fired seven or eight shots from a Makarov pistol. Four of them hit Nemtsov in the head, heart, liver and stomach, killing him almost instantly. He died hours after appealing to the public to support a march against Russia's war in Ukraine. Nemtsov's Ukrainian partner Anna Duritskaya survived the attack as its sole eyewitness.
Zhanna Borisovna Nemtsova is a Russian journalist and social activist. She is the daughter of Boris Nemtsov.
The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR) is a Canadian non-governmental organization dedicated to pursuing justice through the protection and promotion of human rights. The RWCHR's name and mission is inspired by Raoul Wallenberg's humanitarian legacy.
Irina Vyacheslavovna Murakhtaeva, known professionally as Irina Slavina, was a Russian journalist from Nizhny Novgorod city, public and political figure, and editor-in-chief of the Koza Press.
