Russian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitri A. Muratov and 47 other Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging the world’s 3,000 billionaires to donate $100 million to UNICEF, the New York Times reports.

Muratov, former editor of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, shared the prize in 2021 with journalist Maria Ressa of Rappler, a news outlet in the Philippines. He donated the $500,000 prize money to charity and auctioned his Nobel medal for $103.5 million—all of which went to UNICEF to help refugees from Ukraine. In March 2022, he suspended publication of his newspaper, after new Russian laws were enacted that essentially criminalized independent reporting about the war in Ukraine.

Titled “a letter from teachers to their graduates—the richest people on the planet,” the letter calls on billionaires to donate $100 million to UNICEF—not only for children directly suffering as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine but also for those indirectly affected—by year-end. Muratov told the Times that he invited his fellow laureates to sign the letter last week when he spoke in Stockholm at an event for past honorees. Signatories include the writers Orhan Pamuk and Svetlana Alexievich, the Iranian human rights defender Shirin Ebadi, and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus.

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Jakub Laichter)