The Human Rights Week was opened by a press-conference presenting the agenda of the week as well as presenting the HRHT and its member organizations. After the press-conference, the first event began, organized by the Article 42 of the Constitution.

On December 3, the Article 42 of Constitution conducted a meeting of regional women lawyers. They discussed the strategic litigations for the ECHR as well as the innovations and changes within the national court system, among them is constitutional court.

On December 6, The Human Rights House Tbilisi and the Human Rights Centre organized a film screening and a discussion about ‘The Reckoning,’ a documentary on the International Criminal Court (ICC). At the close of the 20th century, in response to repeated mass atrocities around the world, more than 120 countries, including 30 African nations, united to form the International Criminal Court (ICC)—the first permanent court created solely to prosecute perpetrators (no matter how powerful) of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. ‘The Reckoning’ tells the story of the establishment of the ICC and follows the development of the Court in its first six years of operation.

‘The Reckoning’ follows ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and his team for three years across four continents as he issues arrest warrants for the leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army leaders in Uganda, puts Congolese warlords on trial, shakes up the Colombian justice system, and charges Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir with genocide in Darfur. Like a deft thriller, ‘The Reckoning’ keeps you on the edge of your seat. Will the Prosecutor succeed? Will the world ensure that justice prevails?

At the end of the film, a discussion was chaired by Ana Nacvlishvili, the legal expert of the Human Rights Center. She explained the main goal of the ICC and responded to questions from students and journalists. The ICC is important to Georgia because aspects of the 2008 conflict in South Ossetia may be judged to fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC.

On December 7, HRHT screened the documentary film ‘Shooting Under Fire’. This moving and sometimes shocking film shows the lives behind some of the strongest photos taken in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza during the conflict. “If we want to stay 100% safe, we cannot cover this story” says Reinhard, the head of the Reuters photo bureau in Israel. “Our job is to limit the risk as much as possible.”

Reinhard Krause, a German, heads a team of photojournalists made up of local Israelis and Palestinians and we follow both sides as they cover disasters such as suicide bombings, demonstrations and funerals.

Reinhard is up against a deadline and facing a moral dilemma. He’s looking at a photo that shows the head of the female suicide bomber still perfectly intact lying on the ground, severed cleanly from her body without a blemish on her face and with no blood to be seen. Does he decide to show this to the world or keep it hidden? “Every picture must tell a story” Reinhard says and it’s clear what happened with this frame, but is the world ready for this kind of image? He needs to decide within minutes.

Few of us stop to think how our stories and pictures come to us, but with unprecedented access ‘Shooting under fire’ shows us the full emotional process, highlighting the difficult moral decisions that await even the toughest of snappers. It captures the extreme oppressive atmosphere that surrounds people’s lives in Israel.

Giorgi Kupatadze from Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) moderated the discussion following the screening of ‘Shooting under fire’. He discussed with the invited photo reporter Zurab Kurtsikidze from the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA). Both shared their experience and knowledge about covering conflicts – the moral dilemmas and physical treats that photo reporters and journalists face.

On December 9, HRHT and Sapari showed the Georgian documentary ‘The Return’ on family violence. The film was followed by a discussion about violence against women. Liya, the main character of the documentary, has a troublesome past – her mother was killed by her father, and she herself was beaten by him many times—and she spends her adult life attempting to cope with her memories. To cut the vicious circle of violence in the village of her childhood, where domestic violence is considered “normal”, Liya returns to her former home to awaken the villagers and establish new relationships among them.

Liya’s husband and daughter live in town in a multi-storied building. Liya, who grew up in the village, hardly got accustomed to town life and strives after country life. It is important for her as it is for many other town inhabitants to tear up the circle of violence which still occurs in her village among women and men, youth and children.

In the center of the film that is Liya’s return to her native places, where an empty house is waiting for her (her father died a long ago, her brother left for the Russian Federation, and her sister is married and lives in another family). We follow her efforts to establish new relationships between her villagers, and we see that she still has far to go until she come to terms with her father and his violent behaviour. Even so, an despite her painful past, she is not bitter and has kept her love for her own people and life itself.

At the International Day for Human Rights, on December 10, two documentaries were screened at the Human Rights House in Tbilisi. The first film was about juvenile offenders – Books not Bars. The screening was organized by the HRHT and the discussion moderated by the GCRT psychologists. The film tells about realities in the US regarding juvenile justice. With increasing frquency, children in the United States are being prosecuted as adults and sent to adult prisons. Though the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners explicitly states that “young prisoners shall be kept separate from adults,” over 40 states have adopted measures which facilitate the prosecution of juveniles as adult offenders. While juvenile courts have always had provisions for waiving its jurisdiction over the most serious offences (such as homicide or rape), transfers to adult criminal courts were historically limited to only defendants who, in the judgment of the court, could not be rehabilitated under the juvenile justice system. In the past decade, the use of transfers has increased dramatically as societal attitudes towards criminal justice have shifted away from rehabilitation towards retribution and incapacitation.

The fear of the youthful predator has also fueled legislation that allows prosecutors to automatically remove children from juvenile court jurisdiction to be tried as adults if they are accused of committing a serious crime. The notion of the dangerous young offender persists even as arrest rates for juveniles decreases nationwide. Minority youths are also disparately impacted under the juvenile justice system. Studies have found that children of color are disproportionately waived into criminal court. For example, in states where blacks make up only 7 to 27% of the total population, 60 to 88% of juvenile court waivers involved black youths. Though studies have shown that prosecuting children as adults and incarcerating them in adult prisons have not served as any measurable deterrence in juvenile crime, the ideology that young offenders must be severely punished to prevent them from becoming even more hardened criminals remains prevalent.

The trend towards increased incarceration, lengthier sentences, and jailing younger offenders has placed a burden on the corrections system, where prisons are already overcrowded and bed space is scarce. In recent years, the governmental remedy for this problem has been to build more prisons.

The second documentary which was screened on the international Human Rights Day 10 December was ‘War Don Don’ (War is Over) about Sierra Leone and the international justice. The screening was organized together with the HRIDC and with support from the Dutch embassy, the film was translated into Georgian. The moderator of the discussion on Rebecca Richman Cohen’s film was Ucha Nanuashvili from the Human Rights Centre.

On a dusty road in the heart of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, UN soldiers are posted outside a building that locals refer to as the ‘special court’. Inside, Issa Sesay stands trial. But who is Issa Sesay? According to the prosecutors, he is a war criminal, who committed horrendous crimes against humanity. His defenders, however, say he is a reluctant fighter who protected civilians and played a crucial role in bringing to an end ten years of civil war that have ravaged the country. Is it in the interest of peace to severely punish Sesay? And how should a country come to terms with its past? ‘War Don Don’ tells the story of the controversial case before the Special Court for Sierra Leone, seen through the eyes of the prosecutors, lawyers, victims, perpetrators and Sesay himself.

The Human Rights Week was broadly covered by Georgian TVs, radios, newspapers and news agencies.