Mary Page talks with Pavel Chikov, one of Russia’s leading human rights activists and lawyers who heads the Agora International Human Rights Group. A graduate of Kazan State University with a degree in International Law (2000), Pavel Chikov also has a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of North Dakota (USA, 2001) and a PhD in law from the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan. In 2001 Pavel was the founding director of the Kazan Human Rights Centre in Tatarstan; in 2003-2005, he was head of the legal department of the Moscow-based Public Verdict Foundation, and in 2005 he founded the Agora human rights organisation. In 2015 the organisation was transformed into the Agora International Human Rights Group that Pavel continues to lead to this day. Pavel was a member of the Presidential Council on Civil Society Development and Human Rights from 2012 to October 2019. In 2014 Pavel Chikov and the Agora human rights group were awarded the prestigious international human rights award in memory of Professor Torolph Rafto. This interview is also available on our YouTube channel.
