Georgia
Georgia is a republic located in the South Caucasus. It exhibits mid-range performance across all Global State of Democracy (GSoD) categories of democracy. Over the past five years, it has experienced significant improvement in Access to Justice but notable declines in Credible Elections and Freedom of Expression. Some of these concerns are due to allegations of vote-buying, abuse of state resources, and voter intimidation during some election cycles, as well as a hostile environment for media. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Georgia endured years of political instability and a severe economic collapse, but is now an upper-middle-income country and a consistently mid-performing democracy. Especially since the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, much of Georgian public policy has been oriented towards advancing Euro-Atlantic integration, including aiming for membership in NATO and the European Union. Although these processes have spurred significant foreign direct investment and economic growth, in recent years the economy has become increasingly dependent on remittances from the 23 per cent of the labor force that works outside the country.
Georgia is overwhelmingly composed of ethnic Georgians (86 per cent or the population), but has sizable Azerbaijani, Armenian, Abkhaz, Ossetian and other smaller minorities. Ethnic minorities’ grievances in the early years of independence strengthened separatist Abkhaz and Ossetian movements, leading to the Georgian Civil War (1991-1993). Russia intervened on behalf of Abkhaz and Ossetian separatists, and the war ended after the displacement of roughly 300,000 people -- primarily ethnic Georgians -- from the self-declared and largely unrecognized Republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Then in 2008, Russia baited an incautious Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili into providing an excuse to launch a full-scale war, which resulted in Russia establishing de facto control over both separatist republics and displacing an additional 135,000 Georgians and Ossetians. As of 2022, roughly 286,000 Georgians (eight per cent of the population), are registered as internally displaced people, and hold an uncertain place in Georgian society. Although the overwhelming majority of Georgians see Russia as a threat, far-right movements as well as the powerful and influential Georgian Orthodox Church occasionally find common cause with Russia on issues of national identity and opposition to LGBTQIA+ rights. Georgia performs in the high range on Gender Equality, electing its first woman president in 2018 and implementing a gender quota in parliament in 2020.
For the past decade, Georgian politics have been dominated by the United National Movement (UNM) and the ruling Georgian Dream party, which has held national power since defeating UNM in 2012. Since then, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is the head of the UNM and Georgia’s richest man, has been Georgia’s de facto ruler, despite having only intermittently held office. Although the parties largely agree ideologically, identity-based polarization has become intense in recent years, and government - attacks on media and civil society organizations seen to be unacceptably pro-UNM increased sharply in 2021 and 2022.
Georgia’s trajectory in the next five years will be determined by progress towards its long-term goal of EU membership and whether the current or future government can address voters’ most pressing concerns of unemployment and the high cost of living, assuming that Georgian Dream does not change course. The challenge posed by the massive influx of antiwar and draft-dodging Russians in 2022 could impact Social Group Equality as the government negotiates this new economic reality. Finally, it will be important to watch Freedom of Expression in light of recent efforts to clamp down on critical voices in media, civil society, and politics.
Monthly Event Reports
July 2023 | Thousands of far-right activists attack pride festival
Roughly 5,000 ‘protesters’ organised by several far-right organisations stormed a closed Pride Week festival outside of Tbilisi on 8 July. Facing little visible resistance from police on the scene to provide security, the protesters destroyed the festival’s stage and burned both LGBTQIA+ and Ukrainian flags. Georgian LGBTQIA+ groups have not attempted to hold a Pride event open to the public since a violent attack on Pride marchers in 2021 resulted in the death of a journalist and many others injured. In the months leading up to this year’s attack, the leading members of the ruling Georgian Dream party, the Georgian Orthodox Church and government- allied media have raised alarms about “LGBT propaganda” from sources including McDonald’s Happy Meals and the works of French children’s author Charles Perrault, who died in 1703. The organisers of Tbilisi Pride and other CSOs have accused the government of cooperating with the protesters, noting both the lack of police resistance at the event, as well as the unopposed four-kilometre march of the protesters from the city centre.
June 2023 | Parliament amends electoral code
Georgian parliament amended the electoral code on 13 June to transfer the authority to nominate members of the Central Election Commission (CEC) from the president to the speaker of the parliament and reduced the necessary votes from 100 to 76 (the governing coalition controls 84 of 150 seats). Candidates will still be taken from a shortlist provided by a committee constituted of civil society, academics, and a representative of the president. The new system replaces one that had been designed by EU Council President Charles Michel, and was part of a deal between the ruling Georgian Dream and opposition parties negotiated in 2021. The EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement said on 22 June that the amendments ran contrary to the 12 priorities set out for Georgia’s EU accession and would need to be reversed for the process to move forward. Georgian experts concurred, saying the changes reduced the CEC’s independence and placed it under the influence of the ruling party.
March 2023 | Contested ‘foreign agent’ bill withdrawn
Following significant domestic street protests and Western criticism, the ruling Georgian Dream party withdrew its support for two ‘foreign agent’ bills on 9 March. The Georgian parliament had adopted one of the bills on a first reading on 7 March. Despite the withdrawal, Georgian Dream officials continued to defend the bills, promised to reintroduce them in some form in the future, and widely attacked the protesters as “liberal fascists”, “satanists”, “anarchists”, and tools of foreign influence in media. Many such attacks have focused on Lazare Grigoriadis, a 22-year old protester arrested on 29 March, who faces up to 11 years in prison on charges of arson for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at police. Officials have speculated on his sexuality and private life in the media, and Grigoriadis’ lawyers say police elicited a forced confession, denied him access to legal counsel, and forcibly shaved his head.
February 2023 | Georgian Dream announces support for draft ‘foreign agent law’
The ruling Georgian Dream party announced its support for one of two bills that would require all non-governmental organizations and media outlets who receive foreign funding to publicly register as ‘agents of foreign influence’ and face fines up to 25,000 GEL for failure to comply. Both bills, which were introduced by a Georgian Dream breakaway faction on February 14 and 22, have been subjected to sharp criticism from domestic civil society organizations, the President of Georgia, the United Nations in Georgia, and western embassies and government spokespeople, and special rapporteurs from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). The PACE rapporteurs wrote in a statement that the draft law “raises several concerns with regard to its compatibility with democratic and human rights standards.” The bill’s various critics worried it would be used to attack and discredit NGOs and media critical of the government, and noted it appeared to be modelled on Russia’s ‘foreign agent law.’
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