Halyna Chyzhyk

Biography

2024–2025 – Executive Director of the Raphael Lemkin Society, a civic association working to hold Russia accountable for genocide and the destruction of Ukrainian culture.

Key achievements::
• build a team, establish administrative processes, and ensure institutional capacity;
• develop partnerships with Ukrainian museums, the Prosecutor General’s Office, international experts, embassies, and donors.

2019–2023 – Advocacy Officer and Judicial Reform Expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Center

Key achievements:
• advocated for the adoption of laws to reboot judicial governance bodies and introduce transparent procedures for selecting judges of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine;
• secured the liquidation of the scandal-ridden Kyiv District Administrative Court;
• co-created an international coalition that developed recommendations on independent and accountable judicial governance (2021).

2018–2019 – Author and Host of the TV programme “Honor and Dishonor” on judicial reform, broadcast on Channel 24.
In 2018–2019 she also served as a legal adviser in the Secretariat of the Public Council of International Experts, which participated in selecting judges for the High Anti-Corruption Court.

2016–2020 – Member of the Public Integrity Council, participating in the assessment of candidates for the Supreme Court and sitting judges during qualification evaluations. She was a co-coordinator of the Council’s first convocation.

2014–2018 – Lawyer at the Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law.
She provided legal support to journalists and civic activists on freedom of expression and access to public information, and served as a legal adviser to the CHESNO Civic Movement. She secured court victories and defended Radio Svoboda, European Pravda journalist Serhii Sydorenko, and CHESNO representative Iryna Fedoriv.

She co-created and produced the podcast on the judiciary “Sudcast” together with journalist Nataliya Sokolenko (2019–2020).
Together with Nataliya Sokolenko, Yevheniia Motorevska, and texty.org.ua, she co-authored the educational game on judicial integrity “Tear Off the Robe”.

She is a Top 30 Under 30 Kyiv Post awardee (2020) and was included in the Focus magazine ranking of the 100 Most Influential Women of Ukraine (2020, 2021).

Articles:
• The Holodomor as Part of Genocide: Why We Should Talk About It Differently Than We Usually Do, article for Ukrainska Pravda, 2024, link
• Judicial Reform in Times of War: What the EU Can Learn from the Ukrainian Experience with Judicial Reform, article for the public discussion “Ukraine, the European Union and the Rule of Law”, 2022, link
• Judicial Governance in Transitional Democracies: Lessons Learned, analytical study, 2021, link”