Nataliya Novakova (MPA ’16) Shares Perspective on Civil Unrest in Ukraine

Diving into the broader CEU community, first-year MPA candidate Nataliya Novakova initiated and led the first Human RightS Initiative (HRSI) event of the year. “With my experience volunteering with human rights organizations in Ukraine, HRSI is one of the organizations I’m most interested in working with at CEU. I even mentioned it in my SPP application,” she commented.

On Tuesday, September 23, HRSI hosted a screening of 20: Twenty Testimonies About the Turning Point of the Maidan. The documentary recounts 20 perspectives on the events of February 20, 2014, the most violent day of the winter protests at Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine. “There is no simple conclusion to the film,” Nataliya noted. “We were just trying to understand what happened ourselves.” She led the English translation team during the production of 20. Speaking on the clash between civil society protestors and the police, Nataliya, a Ukrainian human rights activist, emphasized, “In the 23 years since independence, we’ve never seen protests resulting in deaths like this. It was a real shock to the people.”

Following the screening, Nataliya led an active Q&A session on the current crisis in Ukraine. Fellow members of the CEU community engaged in dialogue on the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict and societal shifts in Ukraine since these protests.

Prior to her arrival at SPP, Nataliya played an active role in promoting human rights in Ukraine. She participated in the protests from the very beginning in November 2013 and is a member of Euromaidan SOS, a volunteer human rights organization engaged in monitoring protests and related court hearings and providing legal assistance to arrested protesters. With a firm and proven interest in human rights, Nataliya plans to focus her studies at SPP on international security and conflict.

Photo credit: Creative Commons