Responsibility Award 2025: a coalition story made it to the long list

This year, our Coalition of organisations dealing with the protection of the rights of victims of armed aggression was included in the long list of the Responsibility Award 2025. Out of 165 initiatives submitted, only 65 made it to the long list – and being among them is very valuable to us.

This is an important recognition of more than ten years of systematic work by the Coalition of organisations dealing with the protection of the rights of victims of armed aggression against Ukraine (NGO Donbas SOS, NGO Crimea SOS, Right to Protection Charitable Foundation, Charitable Foundation EAST SOS, NGO Civil Holding GROUP OF INFLUENCE, Charitable Foundation Stabilization Support Services, the Crimean Human Rights Group, and the Human Rights Centre ZMINA). For us, this is further proof that our joint efforts to protect victims of war are important for civil society as a whole.

In the “National Partnership Project” category, the winner was the story “Commemoration through Public Spaces: Making the Memory of Fallen Ukrainians Visible” by the Memorial of Heroes.

We sincerely congratulate the Memorial team! The work of our colleagues in commemorating, preserving names and meanings, and engaging in honest and profound conversation about loss and responsibility is truly powerful, deeply precise, and extremely timely. It is work without which neither justice nor the future is possible.

We would like to thank the Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Family Foundation and all partners of the Responsibility Award for creating a space where responsibility, partnership, and unity are not just words, but real actions. Such initiatives reinforce each other – and that is how change is multiplied.

The Responsibility Award was established in 2021 by the Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Family Foundation and is based on the Declaration of Human Responsibilities created by Bohdan Hawrylyshyn. It recognises projects that have emerged from the interaction of different sectors of society, and the key message for 2025 is “Responsibility unites, and unity multiplies change”.

The photos used in this publication were provided by the award organisers.