• The people of Ukraine and their representatives were awarded the European Union’s top human rights prize for their resistance to Russia’s invasion and ongoing war.

• It’s the second straight year EU lawmakers used the Sakharov Prize to send a message to the Kremlin. Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny won it last year.

• “Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine is inflicting enormous costs on the Ukrainian people. They are not only fighting to protect their homes, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, but they are also defending freedom, democracy, the rule of law and European values on the battlefields against a brutal regime that seeks to undermine our democracy, weaken and divide our Union,” said Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

• The 50,000-euro ($58,200) prize is scheduled to be presented during the December 14 session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. 

• Other finalists this year included imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Colombia’s Truth Commission, which was created under a 2016 peace agreement to end the South American country’s civil war. 

The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought

• The EU award, named for Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, was created in 1988 to honour individuals or groups who defend human rights and fundamental freedoms. 

• It was awarded to Nelson Mandela and Anatoli Marchenko for the first time in 1988.

• The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is the highest tribute paid by the European Union to human rights work. It gives recognition to individuals, groups and organisations that have made an outstanding contribution to protecting freedom of thought. 

• Each of the Parliament’s political groups may nominate candidates, as may individual MEPs (the support of at least 40 MEPs is required for each candidate). 

• The nominees are presented at a joint meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Development Committee and the Human Rights Subcommittee, and the members of the full committees vote on a shortlist of three candidates. 

• The final winner or winners of the Sakharov Prize are chosen by the Conference of Presidents, a European Parliament body led by the president, which includes the leaders of all the political groups represented in the Parliament, making the choice of laureates a truly European choice.

• The European Parliament awards the Sakharov Prize at a formal plenary sitting in Strasbourg towards the end of each year.

Who was Andrei Sakharov?

• The father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 for his opposition to the abuse of power and his work for human rights.

• The leaders of the Soviet Union reacted with fury, and refused Sakharov permission to travel to Oslo to receive the Prize. His wife, Jelena Bonner, received it on his behalf. 

• Sakharov was subsequently deprived of all his Soviet honorary titles, and the couple was for several years kept under strict surveillance in the town of Gorky. Only when Gorbachev came to power in 1985 were they allowed to return to Moscow.

• Sakharov revealed his talent for theoretical physics at an early age, and got a doctorate in 1945. From 1948 on, under the supervision of the Nobel Laureate Igor Tamm, he worked on the development of a Soviet hydrogen bomb. Sakharov believed it was important to break the American monopoly on nuclear weapons. 

• But from the late 1950s on, he issued warnings against the consequences of the arms race, and in the 1960s and 1970s he voiced sharp criticism of the system of Soviet society, which in his opinion departed from fundamental human rights.

• His efforts proved partially successful with the signing of the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty.

• In 1970, he founded a committee to defend human rights and victims of political trials. Despite increasing pressure from the government, Sakharov not only sought the release of dissidents in his country but became one of the regime’s most courageous critics, embodying the crusade against the denial of fundamental rights. 

• Sakharov died in 1989 at the age of 68.

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