Ukrainian Mariia Sulialina wins Stockholm’s “Human Rights Defender of the Year” for exposing war crimes against children

Mariia Sulialina, a 27-year-old Ukrainian human rights group Almenda leader, was honored in Sweden with the Civil Rights Defender of The Year 2024 award.

According to hromadske, this was announced on the award's website.

The Civil Rights Defender of The Year Award is an award for outstanding activity in defending civil and political rights. It is awarded annually by the Civil Rights Defenders organization.

This award honors outstanding human rights defenders who continue to fight for civil and political rights despite the risk to their own safety.

This award has been bestowed annually since 2013 to human rights defenders from Venezuela, Türkiye, and Burma.

Since 2013, Ukrainian Mariia Sulialina has worked for the Almenda organization, which gathers evidence of human rights violations by collecting photos and videos and interviewing teachers and parents.

"Almenda" was founded by a group of human rights defenders in Yalta in 2011.

The organization previously focused on helping young people from the occupied peninsula study in Ukraine and integrate into society. It is also currently working on documenting war crimes.

The organization's specified partner is the Representation of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

Mariia Sulialina currently manages the organization together with a team of 11 people.

When Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula, the girl was just 18 years old. This prompted her to leave her hometown of Yalta and settle in Kyiv. From her new residence in Kyiv, she started documenting the human rights abuses that were taking place in the occupied territories.

"Children in the occupied territories are often invisible. They cannot speak for themselves because it is dangerous, and they are not very protected. The younger they are, the more they are influenced by propaganda. Children are our future, and it is our duty to protect them from militarization and indoctrination and to ensure that reintegration processes take into account their needs," said Sulialina.

It is worth noting that the initial meeting of the Bring Kids Back UA International Expert Group was held to establish strategies and actionable measures for repatriating Ukrainian children.

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It should be noted that new evidence that the Russian government and its troops committed war crimes and violated international and humanitarian law in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories was documented by the UN Independent International Commission for the Investigation of Violations in Ukraine.

It was also reported that Germany managed to gather more than 500 pieces of evidence of war crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine; more than 160 witnesses were interviewed.

It is worth adding that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian police have opened more than 105,000 criminal proceedings regarding the war crimes of the Russian occupiers.

Since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, 274 cases under the article "sexual violence" have also been registered.

Also, since March 2022, it became known about 54 cases of executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war by the Russian occupiers.

Furthermore, while occupying the right bank of the Kherson region, the Russian military detained, subjected to torture, and carried out sexual violence against members of the LGBTQ community. These heinous acts were motivated by people's sexual orientation and gender identity.