Remove Anastasia Arkhipova from the jury of IBBY's HC Andersen book award

Danish queen, several countries withdraw from HC Andersen award because of a Russian representative as a member of jury.

In September, six months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Russian illustrator and art professor Anastasia Arkhipova was elected at the IBBY congress in Malaysia as president of the jury that will choose future winners of the HC Andersen Prize.

The prize has otherwise been called the "Nobel Prize" of children's literature and has previously been awarded to prominent names such as Sweden's Astrid Lindgreen and Denmark's Cecil Bødker.

Representative of Russian cultural life cannot present the world's most prestigious award for children's books while Russia is bombing libraries in Ukraine - says Sweden, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, among others.

The Danish IBBY board have chosen to withdraw its nomination of an illustrator and an author because of this situation. Danish Queen Margrethe has chosen to withdraw as patron of the award, which has also been removed from the list of the Queen's foreign patronages on the Royal Palace's website.

Russia is waging a war of aggression against its neighbour, Ukraine, and has been labeled a terrorist state by the EU. Any representative of a Russian state organization becomes a symbol, regardless of what she thinks about the war.

Besides, there is evidence that Anastasia Arkhipova is also on the board of the Moscow Branch of Artists Association of Russia (MOCX), an entity currently very active in promoting the war. The organization has just held a competition where Russian artists had to submit posters, videos and memes to social media for use in a campaign to popularize the "special military operation" and the mobilization among the population  and to promote the " reunification of historic Russian lands".

The Russian army killed the Ukrainian children's book writer Volodymyr Vakulenko during the occupation of Izyum, and despite that it seems that IBBY sees no problem in electing a person connected to the Russian state, and who is a member of the board of organization which are promoting not just war, but also genocide against Ukrainians.

We appeal to IBBY to remove Anastasia Arkhipova from the HC Andersen book award. Otherwise, the name of your respected organization will be associated with Russia and the crimes committed by its army in Ukraine.

Mika Ullstrom    Contact the author of the petition