Published on 01-07-2026, Last modified on 01-07-2026
Award Ceremony Amnesty International Chair 2026 Hanna Liubakova
Every year, Ghent University awards the Amnesty International Chair to a person who makes a special contribution in the field of human rights.
This year’s laureate of the Amnesty International Chair is Hanna Liubakova, a journalist, political analyst, and human rights defender. Her courageous and relentless work reporting on authoritarianism, repression, and democratic resistance in Belarus has significantly shaped global conversations on truth, democracy, and state accountability. Even in exile, she has continued to amplify the voices of political prisoners, persecuted journalists, and silenced civil society actors, demonstrating an unwavering commitment to freedom of expression and democratic solidarity.
The ceremony will take place on the 1st of October at 19:30 at Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 23, 9000 Gent.
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Who is Hanna Liubakova?
Hanna Liubakova is a Belarusian journalist and political analyst. She is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and has reported on developments in Belarus for international outlets including The Washington Post, The Economist, and others.
Liubakova began her career at Belsat TV, the only independent Belarusian television channel, which has been banned by the regime in Minsk. She later worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, Czechia, and is currently writing a book about Belarus.
Her reporting has earned multiple honours, including the Freedom of the Media Award from the Transatlantic Leadership Network and the One Young World Journalist of the Year Award. She was also a finalist for the European Press Prize. In retaliation for her work, the Lukashenka regime sentenced her in absentia to ten years in prison. She is wanted by authorities in Russia and across all CIS countries.
Public lecture
The public lecture and ceremony will take place on the 1st of October at 19:30 at Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 23, 9000 Gent.
The doors will open at 18:30.
How dictatorships take root: what Belarus can teach the world
Belarus was once called the last dictatorship in Europe. It may no longer deserve that distinction – not because Belarus has changed, but because authoritarian ideas and practices have spread far beyond its borders.
For more than three decades, Belarusians have lived through the gradual erosion of freedoms that others assumed were permanent. Their experience reveals a pattern: dictatorship rarely arrives overnight. It advances incrementally through attacks on independent institutions, the erosion of accountability, and the normalization of repression. The mass repression of 2020, the forced landing of a Ryanair flight, the weaponization of migration, and Belarus’s role in Russia’s war against Ukraine were successive stages in that process.
Drawing on Belarus’s recent history, this lecture examines how dictatorships take root, why democracies so often fail to act before they become entrenched, and what Europe’s response to Belarus reveals about the gap between its values and its political choices. Belarus is not a historical anomaly. It is one of the clearest guides to understanding the challenges facing democracies today.
Previously awarded
2025 – Nura Erakat, Palestinian lawyer and activist
2024 – Joe Cannataci, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy
2023 – Elizabeth Wathuti, Climate activist
2022 – Gloria Wekker, Social and cultural anthropologist
2021 – Adam Bodnar, Poland’s former ombudsman, and human rights commissioner
2019 – Geert Cappelaere, Children’s rights expert
2018 – Shirin Ebadi, Iranian human rights activist and Nobel laureate
2016 – Peter Piot, Renowned virologist and former UNAIDS director
2015 – Dave Eggers, American author
2014 – Clive Stafford Smith, Civil rights lawyer and anti-death penalty activist
2013 – Solange Habonimana, Burundian activist
2012 – Thomas Hammarberg as Commissioner for Human Rights in the Council of Europe
2011 – Sister Jeanne Devos who fights for the rights of domestic workers in India
2010 – Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
2009 – Nawal El Saadawi, feminist icon
2007 – Irene Khan, Amnesty International secretary