Equal access of the overall population to land and property;

Freedom of unions, political parties, demonstrations, and meetings;

Freedom of opinion, expression of opinion, mass media;

Prohibition of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;

Equality before the law;

Prohibition of arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

These rights, which have become almost universally accepted today (although not universally achieved), were radical ideas at the beginning of the century. Equal access to land and property and the prohibition of arbitrary exile were indeed revolutionary concepts in a world still unfamiliar with the benefits of strong democracies. Georgia had embarked in a remarkable experiment with democratic principles and ideals.

The experiment, however, was to be shortlived. Shortly after the Constitution was adopted, the "red flag fluttered upon Tbilisi", as Ordjonikidze’s famous cable of February 26, 1921 to Stalin read. The following decades were difficult for democrats and many paid for their efforts to combine the communist experiment with a greater degree of civil and political freedom with their lives or exile. The communist system failed to provide its citizens with the right to free expression, liberty, or freedom of movement among many others. Instead, it attempted to compensate for the lack of those rights by undertaking vast industrialization programs, by committing the government to providing universal housing, and by making the establishment of world class educational and health care systems a state priority.

Discontent about the lack of civic and political rights remained despite material improvements across the Soviet Union. In Georgia’s case, the fight for human rights became subordinated to the idea of national independence. This, in turn, may help to explain the relatively low number of Georgians who participated in the Russian dissident movement. What initially appeared to be the subordination of one goal to another, became an open conflict of priorities during the 'Perestroika' period and the first years of state sovereignty. These years were characterized by an unresolved conflict between ideas of national independence and the protection of human rights. One can recall, for example, the well-known Georgian philosopher Mr. Merab Mamardashvili writing in late 1990: "A single language acceptable for governing structures without altering their nature, is a language of pure national statehood, a language of leadership and a pure race." The idea of national independence, the deserved status for a nation that had fought long and hard for it, was being equated with extreme nationalism.

Unfortunately, calls of this kind found a sympathetic ear in the person of Mr. Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia’s first president after the Soviet debacle, a man who elevated nationalism to the status of a fundamental state pillar and who provided fertile ground for severe ethnic problems to take root. Extreme nationalism paid off neither for Mr. Gamsakhurdia, who had to abandon power nine months after being proclaimed president, nor for Georgia, which found itself immersed in tragic armed conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The notion of human rights began to separate itself from that of nationalism when Mr. Eduard Shevardnadze became president of Georgia. On April 20, 1992, Mr. Shevardnadze established the State Committee for Human Rights’ Protection, a necessary first step for a country unaccustomed to the existence of such government bodies. On October 4, 1994, via a Special Decree of the Head of the State, Mr. Shevardnadze enlarged this Committee’s powers, giving it the responsibility to develop practical measures to ensure the implementation of UN documents, international conventions, pacts and their facultative protocols on human rights (History of human rights in Georgia. Parliament of Georgia, Tbilisi, 1998).

The adoption of the Constitution on August 24, 1995, was an event of primary importance because it provided ample and solid grounds for future legislative activities in the area of human rights. In particular, Chapter Two, "Citizenship of Georgia: Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms", became the mainstay for the overall structure of laws securing human rights and civic freedoms to develop properly. Article 6.2 even declares that Georgian legislation must correspond to universally recognized principles, and that international treaties and agreements take precedence over domestic normative acts. Georgian policy-makers took the matter seriously and from 1993, when Georgia joined the UN, the Government signed and Parliament ratified an impressive array of international conventions, pacts, treaties and facultative protocols in the field of human rights (Vano Imnaishvili, Legal aspects of human rights in Georgia, Centre for Strategic Studies and Development, Berlin #26, 1999, in Georgian leng).

In addition to ratifying conventions and treaties, the Parliament established its own Commission on Human Rights and, in conjunction with the Government, created the Public Defender’s (Ombudsman) Office. The Parliamentary Commission deals with legislative matters and has forwarded a number of important laws under discussion today to Parliament, such as the law on Freedom of Information, on Religious Issues and On Lawyers’ Business. The Commission is responsible for analyzing all draft laws and for assessing how these laws correspond to international principles of human rights’’ protection.

As well as its legislative activities, the Commission also monitors other executive institutions in charge of ensuring that human rights are respected throughout the territory of Georgia. One of these institutions is the Office of the Public Defender (Ombudsman), which has slowly but steadily risen in national importance. A relatively new institution in Georgia, Parliament elected the first Ombudsman in October 1997 and the second in June 2000. The Ombudsman Office comprises two main departments:

The Department for Civil and Political Rights, which takes care of:

Human civil and political rights;
Rights of political organizations and public unions;
Human rights in law enforcement and security bodies and the Ministry of Defense.

The Department for Social and Economic Rights, which takes care of:

Rights of IDPs;
Rights of women and children;
Human rights in sectors of education, science, culture, health care, sport, social welfare, economy, civil legal relations.

The list above should suggest that the Ombudsman’s job is not easy and touches on sensitive and difficult subjects, such as ensuring that law enforcement units and security bodies at the Ministry of Defense respect civic and human rights. Table 1.2 contains information on activities covered by the Ombudsman Office in 1998 and 1999.

Table 1.2 above shows that the notifications and demands managed by the Ombudsman did not vary significantly between 1998 and 1999. It also shows an increase in the number of people that visited the Ombudsman. This reflects a greater public awareness about its existence. At the same time, the number of cases resolved positively decreased, in absolute terms, in 1999. By this, we mean that the Ombudsman considers a citizen’s claim to have solid legal grounds and is undertaking actions to find an acceptable solution. The number of cases resolved positively is half that of 1998, a substantial decrease. This is rather strange. We would expect the number of cases resolved positively to increase, at least partially, as more people access the Office’s services.

More importantly, most of the Ombudsman Office’s activities take place in Tbilisi (70% in 1999). Its activity in the rest of the country is fairly limited (see Fig. 1.1). This does not, of course, mean that human rights are mostly violated in Tbilisi. On the contrary. Just as electricity supply is much worse in the regions than in Tbilisi, existing data indicates that the violation of civic and political rights is more serious in the provinces than in the capital. The Ombudsman Office should not be blamed for this lack of activity outside Tbilisi; it lacks the resources to act properly in the rest of the country. The enforcement of human rights across the country depends on strong institutions, which, in turn, depend on the government’s ability to endow them with enough resources to function properly. To a large extent, the Ombudsman is a public good in a country with little capacity to provide for this type of good.

Fig. 1.1. Citizen’s Complaints to the Ombudsman Office by Regions - 1999

Source: Protection of human rights and freedoms in Georgia in 1998, Annual Report of the Public Defender of Georgia: Tbilisi, 1999 (in Georgian); Protection of human rights and freedoms in Georgia in 1999, Annual Report of the Public Defender of Georgia: Tbilisi, 2000 (in Georgian).

The Ombudsman is not the only office or institution with limited capacity to enforce what current laws dictate. The judicial system appears to be worse when its efficiency is measured in terms of the percentage of cases effectively ruled, as experts in the field recommend (Catherine English and Adam Staplton, The human rights handbook. Apractical guide to monitoring human rights, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, 1995.). Using this unit of analysis, the performance of the Georgian courts proves unsatisfactory. According to the Center for Social Studies, in 1996 the Georgian Courts of Justice reached 17,976 decisions but only 3,989 (or 22%) were executed. In 1997, 6,913, decisions had not yet been executed and by the end of 1999 – 7,228. A closer look at the court records shows the execution percentage to be very low for cases concerning labor disputes. A surprising number of citizens and organizations appear to be above the law. For years such people manage to avoid complying with court decisions.

Box 1.1. Irresistible Windows

The way in which the penitentiary system is managed has often angered the Georgian Parliament. In collaboration with Government officials, the Parliament assessed a move to transfer responsibility for detention facilities from the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Justice. But under the current proposal, personnel from the Ministry of Interior would predominantly continue to staff the detention facilities. In addition, the staff have demanded to have the right to carry out "operative investigative measures" in the penitentiary system to gather evidence for trials whenever needed.

Though the change in management appeared to address the need to ensure that prisoners enjoy a set of basic human rights, such as not to be beaten, the re-arrangement will not solve the problem of living conditions at Georgian prisons. Disastrous sanitary conditions and a low supply of food (among other factors) help to promote the spread of contagious diseases like tuberculosis. For living conditions in prisons to improve, the state must have the necessary resources to spend. Without additional resources to invest, the country will fall short of complying with its own "Law on Prisoners", approved on July 22, 1999, which stipulates the obligations and rights of detained persons. It is a well-intentioned law but its full execution will take considerable financial resources and equipment. If applied to its full extent, the law will ensure that prisoners receive justice without being subjected to cruel punishments. Some measures have already been taken: a colony for juvenile offenders has been established and is close to international standards. The colony has a school, a sports ground and a library. Each detainee has his/her own bed and his/her right to receive family visits is respected.

A second type of problems affecting human rights in the penitentiary system relates to cases of the illegal arrest of people or to the perpetual incarceration of those not proven guilty. According to Ms. Tevdoradze and Mr. Nikolaishvili, a large number of these cases are characterized by blackmail, brutal beating and torture. Even in the most outrageous cases, some employees of the law enforcement bodies appear to be above the law and responsibilities for wrongdoing could not be adjudicated (see Box 1.1). The failure to hold those in charge of enforcing the law accountable for their acts does little to improve the public’s perception about the police. This institution, whose work is crucial for society to function properly, ranks in every opinion poll as one of the most corrupted and disliked. Reports about instance of police beatings, including of media representatives, are not unheard of (Givi Targamadze, The word and the power: relation of media and low enforcement structures in Georgia, Media Caucasica, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia: Democracy, Free Press, Human Rights, 1999, #2, April (in Russian)).

The lack of qualifications among prosecutors and policemen in general accounts for the persistence of an old Soviet practice: citizens can be found guilty based on their testimonies rather than on tangible evidence. Scores of people suddenly decide to confess at offices of the Ministry of Interior. The practice is so widely accepted that the lawyers’ Collegium, an entity that was formerly subordinated to the Ministry of Justice but whose current status is unknown, filed a suit against the Tbilisi municipality in early August, 1999, in an attempt to kill an innovative project supported by a number of NGOs. The project looks to post lawyers, municipality employees selected by competitive examination, at Tbilisi police stations. This legion of lawyers would advise detainees of their rights and obligations when in police custody (In October of that same year, a court ruled that the Collegium lacked the legal status to file such a suit). The Collegium is not alone in its concerns about the unsolicited provision of information on human rights to detainees. In April 2000, another project by NGOs to monitor conditions in pre-trial detention in Tbilisi and to provide free legal services failed after the Ministry of Interior's staff denied monitors access. Several journalists and members of NGOs, including the Liberty Institute, suffered harassment and threats from individuals apparently linked to the Ministry of Interior's officials in an attempt to block the monitoring project.

While these incidents are regrettable and show that Georgia has some way to go until it sheds old Soviet habits for good, the fact that these same incidents have come to our attention denotes a remarkable progress towards freedom of the press. In fact, the publication of the contents of this NHDR 2000, not to mention the contents of the NHDR 1999, is only possible because citizens enjoys a significant degree of freedom to read and publish material. Perhaps with the exception of the Baltic countries, no other former Soviet republic can match the freedom of press observed in Georgia. That said, journalists still get beaten up and threats to independent minds are not uncommon (Zurab Chaberashvili, Georgian mass media: questions and answers, Media Caucasica, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia: Democracy, Free Press, Human Rights, 2000, #1, March (in Russian); Giga Bokeria, Givi Targamadze and Levan Ramishvili, Georgian mass media in the nineties: a step towards freedom, UNDP, Georgia, Tbilisi, 1997). There is a long way to go until journalists feel as free to publish what they see fit as journalists are in western societies. But that should not obscure the remarkable achievements of the last seven years.

The press also has problems of its own for which the government is not responsible. The printed press is gradually losing its market share for news to television. The number of newspapers and other publications in Georgia of different political orientations is noteworthy. This diversity, however, comes at the expense of size, for most of these publications are small companies unable to benefit from economies of scale. Many are in financial difficulties. A process of consolidation in the press industry may be inevitable and we hope diversity will not suffer too badly. Television, on the other hand, has expanded its coverage and is on the way to becoming the main source of news for most Georgian citizens. Though, for many, television has already sold its soul to the "advertising dollars" and cheap, often illegal copies, of American thrillers and other entertaining programmes of dubious quality, it still provides a significant variety of films from all over the world (many of them Georgian) as well as news programs of superior informative value (Here one could mentioned TV Company Rustavi-2's "60 Minutes" programme, which every Sunday manages to produce high quality investigative reports).

Georgian legislation meets almost all of the Council of Europe’s requirements concerning human rights’ protection. The implementation of this legislation, however, leaves much to be desired and reflects a problem already discussed in the NHDR 1999. The Georgian government’s capacity to implement public policy is far below its capacity to design economic and social policy or its capacity to approve laws.

Although Georgia has come a long way in the field of civic and political rights much more progress is needed. There are still contradictions in the Georgian institutional machinery in charge of protecting citizens’ rights. We see a modern Constitution, a well developed Civil Code and Code of Civil Procedures, improved court systems (mainly composed of certified judges) working in parallel to an ancient Prosecutor Office inherited from the Soviet System, and law enforcement bodies that are accused of being the main source of corrupt practices and civil rights’ violations. We see a sincere will to improve the penitentiary system and a total lack of financial means to do so.