Sofia, 9 December 2011

The Bulgarian Judges Association won first prize at Human of the Year 2011, the Bulgarian Helsinki Committees’s (BHC) annual awards for the contribution to human rights and their protection.

The award ceremony took place in Sofia on 9 December 2011, on the eve of the International Human Rights Day.

“The Bulgarian Judges Association is at the forefront of an extraordinary battle. These judges are engaged in fighting the state with exceptional dignity for the opportunity to implement our right to justice. They are fighting for their independence from the primitive aggression of the executive power towards the supremacy of the law, so that citizens have access to lawfulness. They are fighting against corrupt lobbies within the judiciary system, whose epitome is the Supreme Judicial Council, so that we have access to quality jurisdiction by real magistrates,” said Margarita Ilieva, Attorney-at-law, Deputy Director of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and Chairwoman of the Human of the Year award jury, at the ceremony.

“During past year, the Bulgarian Judges Association made a revolutionary step by demanding the resignation of the Supreme Judicial Council, so that the model of this venal and incurable structure is completely reexamined and reconstructed. One day, one of these days, the impious status quo of the judiciary will break down and those who support it will collapse with it. The reason will be the Bulgarian Judges Association, their resilience and durability – the firmness with which they pick out right from wrong; in our interest, the people’s interest,” added Margarita Ilieva.

The jury further presented two runner-up and two special awards.

Antoaneta Tsoneva and Petya Vladimirova were awarded with the runner-up prizes.

Antoaneta Tsoneva is Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Public Environment Development. She has been distinguished for her outstanding work in protecting the electoral rights of citizens and for her fight for a fair and free election process. The institute’s activities include identifying municipalities at risk of vote buying and vote manipulation, the prevention of such practices, campaigning against vote buying, as well as filing complaints regarding election process violations. The organization has worked incessantly at the recent elections in Bulgaria to secure a fair election process.

Petya Vladimirova is an editor at the daily newspaper Dnevnik. She has been distinguished for her hard and uncompromising work in exposing violations of human rights and freedom issues in Bulgaria; for her professional reporting, brilliant analysis, impartiality and high journalistic morality. (Members of the Human of the Year jury, who work at Economedia abstained from voting when the nomination was reviewed).

The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and the Human of the Year jury also awarded two special prizes:

Access to Information Programme (AIP) was awarded the prize for outstanding achievement for the establishment and protection of human rights in Bulgaria. The organization was founded in 1996 to promote the right to access to information, to encourage the search for information, and to work towards the transparency of the activities of central and local government bodies. In 2011, AIP continued to offer legal assistance by reviewing hundreds of cases related to restrictions to the access to information.

Dimitar Dimitrov was distinguished as Activist of the Year. He is one of the most dedicated and visible activists for LGBT rights in Bulgaria, having contributed extensively to the promotion and assertion of the cause. This year, he stood out with his extraordinary human rights solidarity – he initiated the Flower for Free Bulgaria campaign in support of Bulgarian Muslims after the Sofia mosque attack. In a matter of hours, hundreds of people responded to his call for community and humanity against racism and hatred.

The winner of the Audience Award, who received the greatest number of online votes at humanoftheyear.org, was also announced at the ceremony. The winner is Dr. Mila Bobadova – distinguished for her campaign for the criminalization of cruelty against animals. Her nomination was supported by nearly 3000 people.

In 2011, the jury expanded the judging criteria to include nominations of individuals, who fight to protect values, comparable to human rights and whose actions are in line with the spirit of the award. Nominations related to animal rights and the protection of the environment have therefore also been admitted – expressing the jury’s strong conviction that these causes also deserve attention, recognition and admiration.

During the ceremony, the jury made four honorable mentions, accompanied by certificates: Important Steps Forward was awarded to the Initiative for Health Foundation for their work towards the change of drug policies to respect the rights of drug addicts; Community Beacon was awarded to Svetlana Dyakova, who came second in the Audience Award contest, for her fight to protect the rights of children with disabilities and their parents; Lifetime Achievement for the protection of the rights of people with disabilities was awarded to Kolyo Todorov (posthumously); Lifetime Achievement for laying the foundations of free and democratic Bulgaria was awarded to Dimi Panitsa (posthumously).

Human of the Year is a symbolic token for the recognition of rights activism and there is no prize money associated with the awards.

Anyone could nominate a person or an organization based on the criteria for inclusion in the contest. There were a total of 33 admitted nominations. Nominated practices and actions should have great constructive potential, set a legal precedent, or simply been original and creative. Nearly 9100 people voted during the Audience Award contest.

All nominations and their full descriptions can be found on humanoftheyear.org.

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The initiative is funded by Oak Foundation and Open Society Institute – Budapest. BHC would like to thank Studio 5 club, Marvin winery, and Ara Food; its media partners: Programata, Sofia Live, iNews, Bivol, Legal World, Us, Videlina, New Life; as well as all organizations and individuals involved in promoting and supporting the awards.

Thirty-three individuals and organisations were nominated for the 2011 Human of the Year Awards – the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee’s annual awards for contribution to human rights and their protection.

The full list of nominees and the reasons for each nomination are available here.

Human rights activists, journalists, doctors, bloggers, judges and artists are among the nominees. Nominated practices are in the areas of the independent judiciary, fair trial, civic engagement, fair elections, freedom of speech, civic courage, right to education, healthcare and access to information, children’s rights, the rights of mothers, disabled people, refugees and migrants, LGBT rights, animal rights and environmental protection. There are three posthumous nominations. Eight organisations have also been nominated.

The audience can vote for their choice between 1^st and 30^th November at the website www.humanoftheyear.org. The nominee who receives the greatest number of votes will receive the “Audience/Public Choice Award” along with a statuette and a certificate.

The jury will choose the winner of the 2011 Human of the Year Award and the subsequent two runner-ups among all received nominations. The winners will be announced at a ceremony, which will be held on 9^th December 2011 – the eve of the International Human Rights Day.

Nominations for Human of the Year were open until 31^st October. Anyone could nominate an individual or organisation. A committee examined all submissions and admitted those strictly related to specific rights protection activities, carried out between November 2010 and October 2011.

According to the criteria for inclusion, the nominated practice should have set a legal and rights protection precedent, high potential for inciting social development and constructively bringing communities together, be distinguished for its courage, wholeheartedness and creativity.

Actions and practices considered for nomination must be directed towards the promotion and protection of basic human rights. Individuals who fight to protect values, comparable to human rights and whose actions are in line with the spirit of the award, were also eligible for nomination for the first time in 2011.

In 2010, there were twenty-six nominations for the Human of the Year Award. Over 5,500 people voted for the Public/Choice Audience Award. Daniela Dokovska, Chairwoman of the Supreme Bar Council, won the 2010 Human of the Year Award.

There is no prize money associated with the Human of the Year Award. It is a token of recognition and celebration of rights activism.

The chair of the panel of judges Margarita Ilieva presents the Human of the Year 2010 Award to Daniela Dokovska

The Supreme Bar Council Chairwoman attorney Daniela Dokovska was awarded the Human of the Year Award 2010 at the annual ceremony held by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee to celebrate contribution to the protection of human rights in Bulgaria.

‘Attorney Daniela Dokovska is a leader of the Bulgarian legal profession and is respected both as the most influential lawyer in the country and as Chairwoman of the Supreme Bar Council. She has always fought for ethical laws, for an honest justice system, for an orderly state, and for a fair judicial procedure. She always stood for justice – justice that belongs to the people by law, in the face of opposition from society and the authorities. This year she relentlessly worked against all attempts to create legislation that would have harmed the integrity of our justice system and would have restricted the human rights in trial. This year she also came to the defense of the most vulnerable members of our society – the children with mental disabilities living in institutions. She responded promptly to the campaign led by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and spoke in the children’s defense before the Prosecution Service demanding that any evidence of misconduct in respect of the children must be investigated thoroughly – including the cases of deaths in the past. As a result, the Prosecution Service promised to do all that is expected of them,’ said the Chairwoman of the Awarding Committee, Margarita Ilieva of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee.

In addition to the Human of the Year Award, two second place awards and one special award were presented.

Attorney Valeria Ilareva and the organization Elektronna Granitsa won, respectively, second and third places.

Attorney Valeria Ilareva is defending the rights of refugees and immigrants in Bulgaria. She is the most nominated person for the Human of the Year Award 2010 – her nomination was proposed 20 times. Valeria is a human rights lawyer who works pro bono. Her work is intended to benefit the other, and not her own identity or her own community. Valeria has been very successful in fighting for transfers of foreign nationals from the notorious detention center in Busmantsy. Hers is the main contribution to the campaign for amendment of the Foreign Nationals Act in its regulation of the status of foreigners who do not possess valid documents, of their rights to education and to employment in Bulgaria.

Elektronna Granitsa (Electronic border) is an organization for the protection of free information and of privacy within the electronic communications sector. The project includes more than 300 activists fighting against ‘the uncontrolled intrusion of the authorities into our private space’, and for the protection of freedom of expression.

The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and the Awarding Committee of the Human of the Year Award 2010 also presented one special award:

Peter Kichashky received recognition as Activist of 2010. He is a 21-year-old law student in a wheel-chair who already has a number of successful battles under his belt – he has won cases and led initiatives for the protection of people with disabilities. He has filed dozens of inaccessible architecture complaints before the Commission for the Protection against Discrimination against banks, public services providers, etc. In November 2010 he won his case against the Troyan Monastery Hegumen – the first discrimination case in Bulgaria against a member of the clergy.

The winner of the Audience Award was the person who received the most votes posted at the website humanoftheyear.org – Ivo Indjev, a journalist. He was nominated by four people who gave the following reasons for choosing him: ‘Ivo Indjev is a brave man because writing about the unsightly side of Bulgaria takes a lot of courage these days. It is even more courageous to stand alone, surrounded by a crowd of bend backs.’ and ‘Because the Bulgarian media do not perform their duty as the fourth power in our society, people like Ivo Indjev, who are not afraid of expressing their own opinion and who act as true journalists in compliance with the principles of deontology, these people are rare and they must be supported.’ Ivo Indjev received 1486 votes.

The winners in the 2010 awards (from left): Ilia Markov and Konstantin Pavlov from Electronic Frontier (third award), Daniela Dokovska (first prize), Valeria Ilareva (second prize), Peter Kichashky (2010 Activist of the Year special prize) and Ivo Indzhev (audience award).

Two special recognition prizes were announced at the ceremony. The Awarding Committee acknowledged the contribution to the advancement of law made in three strategic judicial decisions issued by the judges Snejana Denkova, Angelina Boneva and Georgi Elchinov. These judicial decisions were the result of successful collaboration in the protection of rights between all the participants in the proceedings. In recognition of the contribution to the progress of the LGBT movement the Awarding Committee praised the work of activists fighting for the rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual community in Bulgaria.

The Human of the Year panel of judges, from left - Yana Buhrer Tavanier, Margarita Ilieva, Desislava Petrova (from the BHC), Theodora Zaharieva (Human of the Year 2009), Mimi Furnadzhieva (Human of the Year 2008).

The Human of the Year Awards are not financial prizes – their purpose is recognition and encouragement, their aim is to facilitate the human rights debate and activism in Bulgaria. The winner of the big prize was presented with a crystal statuette and a certificate, and the rest of the winners received plaquettes and certificates.

Each year the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee welcomes nominations in favour of persons or organizations based on general criteria. This year the Awarding Committee approved 26 nominations. The organizers invite nominations in support of contributions made to the filed of human rights that are precedential, original or creative. This year’s online votes for the Audience Award exceeded 5500 in total. 47 000 visited the web-site of the Human of the Year 2010. In 2009 their number was 15 000.

This project has been made possible by the generous financial support of the Oak Foundation, the Open Society Institute – Budapest and the Netherlands Embassy in Sofia.

For further information, please contact:
Yana Buhrer Tavanier, manager of Campaigns and Communications, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee
Tel.: 0887 668 089, e-mail: yana@bghelsinki.org

Everybody can nominate an individual or an organisation for specific human rights acts/practices, carried out in the period November 2009 – October 2010.

Read more about the Award here.

Read the nomination criteria here.

Nominate online here, or send to address 7 Varbitsa Street, Sofia 1504, Bulgaria until October 31, 2010.

The online voting for the Public Choice Award is from November 1 to December 6, 2010.

The Awards ceremony will be held on December 10, the International Day of Human Rights, in Sofia.

“Human of the Year” is an annual award recognizing contribution to human rights in Bulgaria

We are looking for the bold, the tenacious, those with civil courage – in order to honour and encourage them.

We are looking for the acts that are a precedent in the sphere of human rights, that have significant potential for stimulating societal development, or are simply innovative and creative.

We are looking for them because we know that they frequently remain unheard or undervalued.

We want to show the courage of the people in Bulgaria and to catalyze their fight for human rights in Bulgaria.

Theodora Zaharieva, founder of the Center for the Protection of Rights in Health Care was awarded the Human of the Year Award 2009 at the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee Annual Awards for contribution to human rights.

The Ceremony was held, on the international day of human rights, the 10 December, in Sofia.

“Theodora and the Center have been successful representing their clients in cases of significant public value against state authorities, and their victories in court benefited thousands of people, winning thousands of leva in compensation for damages. The cases concern medical malpractice, medical care denial, and inadequate medical equipment, the authorities’ failure to introduce legislation that would guarantee the right to adequate health care and to provide medications. The Center’s litigation activities include groundbreaking class actions that aim at providing protection on a large scale to particular groups of patients. Among these are lawsuits against pharmaceutical corporations for damage to health caused by medical research. The Center’s work combines the true human rights approach and the conviction that the people should have control over their human rights, that these rights are achievable, and that all depends on each of us.” – these were part of the jury’s considerations in selecting the winner.

Apart from the Human of the Year Award, the jury awarded two Second Awards and two Special Awards.

Donka Panayotova and the Facebook group Voting Without Borders won Second Awards.

Donka Panayotova – the only woman leader of a Roma rights organization (the NGO Drom based in Vidin) – received the award for her advocacy work on equal access to education for Roma children in Bulgaria. For more than a decade she and her team have been taking practical steps to end segregation of Roma children in schools in Vidin and the region. With her help, approximately 1700 children have been transferred from ghetto schools to inclusive classrooms; 700 children gained access to desegregated schools in 2009.

The Facebook group Voting Without Borders received an award for mobilising the civil society in order to protect the equal right to vote. The reasons behind Voting Without Borders were the numerous complaints from Bulgarians living abroad who did not have the chance to vote in the European Parliament elections in 2009 because of the insufficient number of polling locations and the procedural inflexibility of setting up additional polling centers. Following considerable pressure from Voting Without Borders the Bulgarian Central Election Commission amended its regulations to allow for the opening of polling centers in every location that featured a Bulgarian community.

The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and the jury for the Human of the Year Award 2009 presented two Special Awards.

Architect Kalina Pavlova from Varna received the prize for her outstanding perseverance during her fight for the protection of public interest. She was fearless in fighting any unlawful or questionable decision of the municipal authorities which favoured corporate interests and held the potential to harm the public good or the transparency in local government. The jury found her “a brave and uncompromising person who stands in opposition to the authorities and harmful business interests. Kalina is the most deserving among the people whose work and civil conscience made a difference in Bulgarian in 2009.”

Kapka Panayotova received the award for her general contribution to the protection of human rights in Bulgaria. Kapka Panayotova is founder and ‘engine’ of the Center for Independent Living – Sofia, an organisation which since 1995 has been working on promoting independent living and equal opportunities for all. Kapka had been involved with strategic litigation concerning accessible environment for people with disabilities – for example, inaccessible underground public transport, court buildings and un-adapted education system. Under her management the Center was responsible for legislative changes introduced with the Integration of People with Disabilities Act and the Regulation for the Application of this act, as well as the Protection against Discrimination Act.

The Public Choice Award was presented to the nominee who received the largest number of votes submitted through online voting on the web-site: www.humanoftheyear.org. The winner is “Spasi, dari na…”, an organisation whose mission for the last three years has been to support campaigns for the treatment of children. The nomination of “Spasi, dari na…” was submitted by Boryana Kirilova and Krassimira Velichkova who said that “The initiative “Spasi, dari na…” is a unique example in Bulgaria of an informal civil society group whose purpose is to give help. Their team is also working towards a reformation in governmental policies and the creation of practical mechanisms that would ensure that the health of children would not be dependent on private donations. This is an entirely voluntary group. Until now, they have helped find treatment for 25 children by raising more than 2,5 million levs.” During the two months of voting for the Human of the Year Award “Spasi, dari na…” received more than 3 500 votes.

The prizes given at the ceremony are non-financial. The idea behind giving these awards is to distinguish and encourage, but also to provoke – thinking, talking and fighting for the cause of human rights in Bulgaria. The winner of the first prize was presented with a statuette and a certificate, and the other winners received plaques and certificates.

Ivo Indzhev, journalist, was awarded a certificate for most nominated person of the year. He was nominated fourteen times before and four times after the official deadline for submitting nominations.

This year everyone could nominate a person or an organisation on the basis of certain criteria. 22 nominations were admitted. In making the selection, the jury was looking for deeds with the potential to effect change that are unprecedented in the human rights sphere or are simply original and creative. The votes on the web-site for the Public Choice Award went beyond 15 500.

This event was made possible with the financial support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Bulgaria.