Don’t put profit before freedom, activist warns business leaders

Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk, in an interview with I by IMD at the St Gallen Symposium, implored business leaders to stop taking their democratic freedoms for granted and to look beyond the blind pursuit of profit.

Oleksandra Matviichuk is head of the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) in Kyiv – an organization set up just over 15 years ago to work for the protection of human rights in Ukraine – and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) region.

The CCL, which won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2022, strives to achieve “the restoration of justice for all victims of war crimes” and has documented alleged war crimes since Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of last year. Donors include the US Department of State, the European Commission, UNDP, the Open Society Foundation, and the Sigrid Rausing Trust.

In April, Time magazine featured Matviichuk among its 100 Most…