The Council of Europe Office in Belgrade and the Embassy of France to Serbia are hosting a reception in honour of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, the laureate of the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, awarded by the Council of Europe.
The reception will take place on Tuesday, 15 October, from 17.30 to 19.00 at the French residence (Gracanicka 2).
The seventh Václav Havel Human Rights Prize – which honours outstanding civil society action in defence of human rights – has been awarded jointly to imprisoned Uyghur intellectual Ilham Tohti from China and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR), which brings together young people from across the Balkans to promote reconciliation. The prize was presented at a special ceremony in Strasbourg on the opening day of the autumn plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Liliane Maury Pasquier, will address the guests together with Ambassador of France Jean-Louis Falconi and Head of the Council of Europe Office in Belgrade Tobias Flessenkemper.
France is chairing the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers from May to November this year and the chairmanship is marked by the 70th anniversary of the Council of Europe. This award comes in line with one of the priorities of the French chairmanship - Preserving and consolidating the European system of human rights protection.
This year’s laureate, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, was established in 2003 and promotes reconciliation through building connections between young people across the Balkans from different ethnic groups, regions and countries. By working together for human rights, they aim to build links that can prevent the re-emergence of ethnic conflict in the region.
We kindly invite the media to attend the event. Accreditation is obligatory/mandatory/required.
Contact for media accreditation:
Nadja Petrovski, Embassy of France to Serbia, [email protected]; mob. 063 57 04 02
Mona Alghaith, Council of Europe Office in Belgrade, [email protected]; mob. 063 365 751
Vaclav Havel Prize
The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize is awarded each year by the PACE in partnership with the Václav Havel Library and the Charta 77 Foundation to reward outstanding civil society action in the defence of human rights in Europe and beyond.
The Prize is awarded in memory of Václav Havel, playwright, opponent of totalitarianism, architect of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, President of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic and an enduring symbol of opposition to despotism. Nominations of any individual, non-governmental organisation or institution working to defend human rights are taken into consideration. The Prize consists of a sum of €60 000, a trophy and a diploma.
On 25 March 2013, the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize was launched at a ceremony in Prague with the signature of the Co-operation Agreement by the President of the Assembly, Jean-Claude Mignon, the Director of the Václav Havel Library, Marta Smolíková, and the Chair of the Steering Committee of the Charta 77 Foundation, František Janouch, in the presence of Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize replaces the Assembly Human Rights Prize, which was created in 2007 and awarded every two years, first in 2009 to "British Irish Human Rights Watch" and then, in 2011, to the Russian NGO "Committee against Torture".
