Maria Ejchart – lawyer, who has been with the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, the largest NGO in Poland, for over 20 years. She is a joint founder of the Free Courts Civic Initiative and the Justice Defence Committee (KOS), where she has been holding the role of coordinator since 2018 and has been representing the judges before the ECtHR. President of the Management Board of the Zbigniew Hołda Association since 2015. She has been co-organizing dozens of demonstrations and protests in defence of the rule of law and repressed judges since 2017.
She is a member of the Ombudsman’s Social Council and co-chairperson of the Committee of Experts of the National Torture Prevention Mechanism. She has been coordinating the Niewinność (Innocence) Programme since 2003, which deals with miscarriages of justice and wrongly convicted people. She is the only Polish member of the European Innocence Network.
She has been working as a human rights trainer and expert in Poland and abroad for many years. She is an expert in proceedings before courts in Great Britain and Ireland on the observance of human rights and the possibility of providing appropriate medical care at Polish penitentiary units in extradition cases of Polish citizens. She is the author of numerous reports on the observance of human rights in Poland. She is a co-author of the academic monograph Dożywotnie pozbawienie wolności. Zabójca, jego zbrodnia i kara (Life imprisonment. The killer, his crime and his punishment).
