The 2025 “Arthur Svensson International Prize for Trade Union Rights” is awarded to Aliaksandr Yarashuk, who has sacrificed his personal freedom to defend the right to organise, act collectively and conduct trade union work. Yarashuk is President of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP), Vice-President of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and a member of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Governing Body. As a strategy to defend trade union independence in Belarus, Yarashuk and his colleagues initiated a complaint to the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association in 2002.