At a meeting in Sofia between November 16 and 19, the General Assembly of the International Helsinki Federation, representing 46 national Helsinki committees and organizations working with the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), presented Russian lawyer and human rights activist, Karinna Moskalenko, with its 2006 Recognition Award. The citation, signed by IHF President Ulrich Fisher and its Executive Director Aaron Rhodes, said: ‘Karinna Moskalenko is among the most outstanding human-rights lawyers in the world, and has helped scores of Russian fight for their rights in court. . . Karinna Moskalenko has insisted that Russian citizens should have access to international standards of justice and has assisted in bringing their cases before the European Court of Human Rights. . . Her moral and intellectual powers and the humaneness of her personality are her gift, but it is a gift that she dedicates to society. That gift deserves recognition, not persecution’. In a speech at the award ceremony Karinna Moskalenko underlined the fact that, though appeals to the European Court of Human Rights are formally filed against Russia, they are actually filed on Russia’s behalf, since they contribute to an improvement in the country’s legal situation.