Yevgeniy Zhovtis (Kazakhstan)

Country: Kazakhstan

Yevgeniy Zhovtis is the director of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law since 1993.

Before he graduated with honors from the High Law School “Adilet” in 1999, Zhovtis served as a union leader in the early 1990s and has been an outspoken critic of human rights violations in Kazakhstan for the past 25 years. The accomplished lawyer was one of the founders of BOTA Foundation in 2008 and is considered to be one of the best lawyers throughout Kazakhstan.

Zhovtis is the recipient of several honors for his human rights work, including: the 1998 United States and European Union Democracy and Civil Society Award, the 1999 International League for Human Rights Award, the 2005 International Helsinki Federation Recognition Award, the 2007 Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Human Rights Award, and 2010 the Norwegian Helsinki Foundation Andrey Sakharov Award. He has also published more than 200 publications on the problems of democratization and economic transformation, the human rights situation and rule of law in Kazakhstan, and has lectured extensively on these topics.

Watch him speak about his experiences at the Eighth Assembly.