Siarhei Drazdouski
The annual Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk was established in 2005 to honour the work of HRDs who are courageously making outstanding contributions to the promotion and protection of the human rights of others, often at great personal risk to themselves.
Siarhei Drazdouski is a founder and director of the Office for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Since 2006 he has worked in the Belarusian Society of Disabled People. In 1997 he was among the founders of the Association of Wheelchair Users and in 2001 became the Head of the Association. Siarhei Drazdouski has also acted as an expert of the Council of Europe projects and the UN programmes.
The environment for the work of human rights defenders (HRDs) in Belarus has continuously deteriorated since an authoritarian political regime was established there in 1994. HRDs are systematically subjected to intimidation and harassment, including judicial harassment, restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly, and movement, as well as arbitrary detention and conviction, ill-treatment and defamation, searches of offices and personal belongings, and confiscations of equipment.
