Gyunay Ismayilova elected first among equal at Phase Three of the contest "Hero of the Caucasus-2015" 4 topics и One message

The human rights defender from Azerbaijan Gyunay Ismayilova, who continued, despite pressure, heading the activities of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety, which was monitoring the trials of rights defenders and journalists, has become the first among equal by the outcomes of the contest "Hero of the Caucasus-2015" for Southern Caucasus. She received 14.96% of the total votes of the "Caucasian Knot" readers.

The second place was awarded by readers to public figure from Nagorno-Karabakh Albert Voskanyan, who is engaged in monitoring of penitentiary institutions and defending inmates’ rights, by helping former inmates in employment and solution of everyday problems. Albert Voskanyan gained 14.28% of all the votes.

The third place went to the rights defender from Adjara Tamta Mikeladze, who defended the interests of the owner of the children’s boarding school in Kobuleti, the closure of which was demanded by local residents. She received 14.23% of all the votes.

Participants of Phase Three of the contest "Hero of the Caucasus-2015"

The list of heroes, nominated by the "Caucasian Knot" for Phase One of the contest "Hero of the Caucasus-2015", included representatives of Southern Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. They are all Heroes of the Caucasus, since they achieved important results in their activities.

The voting for laureates of Phase Three of the contest "Hero of the Caucasus-2015" lasted for 10 days, on December 22-31.

Candidatures of six heroes were nominated for voting. Each of them achieved concrete tangible results. The list of the heroes, nominated by the "Caucasian Knot" for voting, included: rights defenders Gyunay Ismayilova and Albert Voskanyan, member of the art-group "Counterstrike" Gerbert Gevorgyan, advocates Gela Nikolaishvili and Tamta Mikeladze, journalist Elena Zavodskaya and activist Dina Alborova.

Results of the contest depended only of readers’ activities.

To conduct the polling and ensure a reliable accounting of the votes, we made use of the independent service Polldaddy, based in the Netherlands, integrated into the Wordpress, the most popular platform and sites and blogs, on which every sixth website of the Internet is based. This service is used by such popular Internet resources like the PCWorld, Wired, TechCrunch and Myspace. The "Caucasian Knot" had no technical facilities to affect the process of voting.

To nominate candidatures for the contest "Hero of the Caucasus", we launched a special branch (thread) in the forum of the "Caucasian Knot"; it can be also done by any other suitable way of communicating with the edition – by means of the SMS-service, feedback form, and comments to the materials on the page of the "Heroes of the Caucasus".