We believe the deterioration in human rights protections in Russia has reached a critical point that the EU needs to reflect as it assesses Russia’s commitment to the shared values articulated in the EU-Russia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, currently being renegotiated. The recent spate of murders of human rights defenders and other violations detailed in this memo are unprecedented even in the recent years of Russia’s deteriorating human rights record. They need to be fully factored into a sober assessment of how the EU can formulate its engagement with Russia in a manner consistent with EU values and of how the EU can use the human rights consultations and other engagement with Russia to promote positive change.

In Copenhagen this month, Human Rights Watch presented its proposal for institutional reform to monitor host countries' compliance with international human rights norms. We also believe that the IOC should make host city contracts public.

Human Rights Watch has serious concerns about the safety and well-being of Rashid Abdullaevich Gasanov; Magomed Ilyasovich Sheihov; and Sirazhudin Minatulaevich Shafiev. Our organization has documented several instances in which people subject to unlawful detentions in Dagestan are in grave danger of torture, ill-treatment, and extrajudicial execution.

The European Parliament has awarded its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Memorial, a leading Russian human rights organization and to the prominent human rights activists Ludmilla Alekseeva, Sergei Kovalev, and Oleg Orlov, and other Russian human rights defenders.

(New York, October 9, 2009) – The award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama should encourage him to apply his stated principles to both foreign and domestic human rights policy.

The international community should press Georgia and Russia to bring to justice those who violated the laws of war, causing many civilian deaths and injuries and widespread destruction of civilian property in last summer’s short but deadly conflict. As an EU-funded independent, international fact-finding mission on the conflict in Georgia published its report on September 30, 2009, the lack of accountability is striking.