The Georgian government drove the country toward a human rights crisis in 2024, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2025. The government has adopted new repressive laws, unleashed brutal police violence against mostly peaceful protesters, and pivoted away from the European Union accession process and the human rights reforms it would have required.
For the 546-page world report, in its 35th edition, Human Rights Watch reviewed human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In much of the world, Executive Director Tirana Hassan writes in her introductory essay, governments cracked down and wrongfully arrested and imprisoned political opponents, activists, and journalists. Armed groups and government forces unlawfully killed civilians, drove many from their homes, and blocked access to humanitarian aid. In many of the more than 70 national elections in 2024, authoritarian leaders gained ground with their discriminatory rhetoric and policies.
"The government is relentlessly taking the country into a repressive era that is uncharted for Georgia but all too familiar in authoritarian states," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia Director at Human Rights Watch. "But it is never too late for it to reverse course, drop repressive laws, allow freedom of assembly, stop violence against protesters, and hold police accountable."
The government abandoned Georgia's EU accession process one month after the disputed October 26 parliamentary elections that kept the country's ruling party in power, which local observers and Georgia's president contended were marred by massive vote rigging. The decision was made in spite of Georgia's Constitution, which enshrines full EU integration as a goal for the state, and the desire of some 80 percent of the population for EU membership, prompting weeks of nationwide protests.
- Law enforcement responded to pro-EU protests during 2024 with violent force, using tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and various forms of physical violence. Riot police and informal violent groups associated with the authorities have beaten opposition and independent journalists and interfered with their work with impunity.
- In June, parliament adopted the "Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence," a type of "foreign agent" law, that requires nongovernmental groups and media receiving 20 percent or more of their funding from abroad to register as "organizations serving the interests of a foreign power." It imposes onerous, intrusive, and duplicative reporting requirements, allows the authorities to demand sensitive personal data from organizations and individuals, and provides crippling fines for noncompliance.
- From late April through June, unidentified assailants carried out violent attacks on over a dozen activists, in many cases resulting in injuries requiring hospitalization. Most attacks were committed by small groups of assailants in public places with witnesses and CCTV cameras nearby. Yet the police have not identified or arrested any suspects.
- In September, parliament adopted anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) amendments imposing discriminatory restrictions on rights to education, health, freedom of expression, and peaceful assembly. The amendments also prohibit positive references to LGBT people in literature, film, and media, as well as in schools and at public gatherings.
Georgia's international partners should call for an independent investigation into the government's violent clampdown on mainly peaceful anti-government protests and consider imposing targeted, individual sanctions against officials responsible for violent abuses against peaceful protesters.
