Vladimir Kara-Murza To Receive 2018 Geneva Courage Award

February 7, 2018

Open Russia’s Vladimir Kara-Murza is to receive the 2018 Geneva Courage Award for his extensive work and activism in promoting human rights and justice in Russia, as well as calling out the brutality of the Putin regime.

The decision to nominate Kara-Murza was made by a coalition of 25 non-governmental human rights groups and will be presented at the 10th Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, where Kara-Murza will address over 700 U.N. officials, human rights activists and journalists.

Kara-Murza is chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom and the vice-chairman of the Open Russia Movement, and has also been one of the most vocal and effective campaigners for Magnitsky-style sanctions against Russian human rights abusers in the western world.

Despite being poisoned twice, Kara-Murza continues to speak out fearlessly against corruption and human rights abuses in his home country, while pursuing a rigorous campaign for truth and justice for his long-time friend and colleague Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered outside the Kremlin in 2015.

Through his work with Open Russia, Vladimir Kara-Murza advocates for the establishment of democracy and the rule of law in Russia, and the strengthening of Russian civil society, which will be the country’s lifeline when the current regime comes to an end.

Executive Director of UN Watch Hillel Neuer, one of the co-organisers of the event, said that Kara-Murza is being honoured “for persevering against overwhelming odds, and at great personal sacrifice, in opposing the cruel dictatorship of Vladimir Putin, and for pursuing the dream of a free and democratic Russia,”

Vladimir Kara-Murza is the author of four books and is now a regular columnist at the Washington Post.  He makes regular appearances on TV across the Western world and has directed two documentary films: They Chose Freedom (a film about dissidents in the USSR) and Nemtsov (on the life and work of slain opposition politician Boris Nemtsov).