This year marks the hundredth birth date of Bohdan Hawrylyshyn leading various private and public institutions in Ukraine to honour him. A brief description of his amazing journey can throw some light on why they consider this important.
Bohdan Hawrylyshyn was born on October 19th, 1926, in the village of Koropets, Western Ukraine. Until the war, he lived a normal country life. The war disrupted this; after being taken to work as an Ostarbeiter in Germany, he ended up in a Prisoner of War camp, where he finished High School.
To pay his passage to Canada, as a refugee, he committed to work as a lumberjack for a period of 6 months. Frail but smart, he traded English language courses to his fellow workers against help in his daily chores, despite the fact that he was but a course ahead of others in the apprenticeship of the language.
While working as a barman to subsist, he became the first Ukrainian refugee to receive a scholarship to attend the University of Toronto, graduating first in class, three years later, from the faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
It was during his work as an engineer at Alcan in Quebec that he learned that the company had founded a management school in Geneva, the Centre d’Etudes Industrielles, later renamed the International Management Institute, now IMD. He succeeded in convincing his employer to send him there for a year in 1957.
During his time there he was asked to return as a professor, which he did three years later. He became the Director of the Institute in 1968, giving lectures across the globe.
In 1971, he convened a symposium for board members and CEOs of leading multinational companies in Davos, the first step towards the establishment of the World Economic Forum.
He took an early retirement in 1986, deciding the devote the remainder of his life to Ukraine. In 1989, he founded the International Management Institute in Kyiv, together with the Institute of Economics of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. IMI-Kyiv was the first international management school in the whole of the Soviet Union.
In 1991, he took part in parliamentary discussions leading to Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence and a year later set up, with the support of George Soros, the International Renaissance Foundation. That same year he founded the Council of Advisors to the Presidium of the Parliament of Ukraine, composed of such eminent leaders as Romano Prodi, Raymond Barre, Sir Geoffrey Howe, Lady Shirley Williams, Zbiniew Brzezisky, among others. He had met them over the years he acted as Chairman of the St Gallen Symposium, which gathers political, business, academic and civil society leaders.
He also acted as advisor to Ukraine’s first presidents. However, his meeting with youth leaders of the Orange Revolution confirmed him in his decision to focus on the next generation of ethical, democratic leaders. He set up his foundation, initiating a number of programmes, among which Young Generation is Changing Ukraine program (over 1600 alumni) and Ukrainian Youth Delegate to the UN (22 to date), to equip youth with skills to lead Ukraine in its democratic transition. In 2014 he authored a Declaration of Human Responsibilities, based on the idea that with every human right comes a personal and civic responsibility. The Declaration details 15 Principles across five main areas: family, society, country, the world, and oneself. Ukraine became the first country to officially recognise a national Human Responsibility Day in its honour in 2021.
Since his death in 2016, the Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Family Foundation has pursued his mission, expanding the scope and number of programmes.
Recognising his relentless efforts to support Ukraine, an inter-factional parliamentary group in memory of Bohdan Hawrylyshyn was formed. This initiative is aimed at uniting efforts to honour his memory and legacy.
Later in the year, the Parliament of Ukraine included the centenary of Bohdan Hawrylyshyn’s birth in the Resolution on Commemorations and Anniversaries to be Marked at the State Level in 2026–2027.
The question in the title can now be answered; few Ukrainians have acquired such an undisputed reputation internationally as Bohdan Hawrylyshyn. He believed in his country, its commitment to democracy and in the vibrant youth. He witnessed how, both in 2004 and in 2014 Ukrainians demonstrated, for some at the cost of their life, to ensure that Ukraine remained democratic and continued its pursuit to integrate a coalition of countries, the EU, who’s democratic and ruled based societies mirrored its own.
There is, however, another important reason to honour Bohdan Hawrylyshyn: russia, through its propaganda machine, has sought to erase Ukraine’s history, language, culture, heroes. It is therefore important to forcefully reclaim the truth by honouring those who, like Bohdan Hawrylyshyn, have contributed to making Ukraine what it is today, a country which, faced with a brutal war, remains true to its democratic values.
Slava Ukraini! Heroiam Slava!
Christine Hawrylyshyn-Batruch, President of the Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Family Foundation, Bohdan Hawrylyshyn’s daughter
🔗Source: https://www.100news.tv/2026/06/christine-batruch-bohdan-hawrylyshyn.html