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The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, will undertake a visit to Georgia from 6 to 13 February 2012.

On February 3, a round table will take place in the Hotel Holiday Inn from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. The Human Rights Center will present the results of monitoring on practical implementation of freedom of assembly in Georgia.

The report of the Human Rights Center – Monitoring the Freedom of Peaceful Assembly in Georgia covers the monitoring period from January 1 2011 to June 30 2011. It represents analysis of key freedom of assembly related legislative and empirical issues as well as trends currently present in the country.

The report is predominantly based on the empiric data provided by 25 monitors from 5 cities and regional centers in the country. Monitors were trained by the OSCE/ODIHR and the Council of Europe experts on freedom of assembly.

The project “Capacity building for human rights defenders on monitoring freedom of assembly in Georgia” was carried out in cooperation with OSCE/ODIHR and by the Council of Europe.

The aim of the project was to support human rights defenders in Georgia by increasing their monitoring skills in the area of freedom of peaceful assembly.

During the year of 2011 Georgian Parliament adopted approximately 400 legislative amendments. Following laws have been adopted: Law on Assemblies and Manifestations, Code of Imprisonment, Law on Personal Data, Law on Operative-Investigative Activity, etc. The last amendments were done at the special session on December 28 where Georgian parliament adopted several laws among them are Organic Law on Political Unions of Citizens and Law of Georgia on Personal Data Protection.

Juvenile diversion and mediation program was launched in November, 2010 in the framework of justice reform. The Program aims to completely discharge juvenile offenders from criminal liability to launch a criminal case against them or to drop the already launched proceeding. Nowadays diversion and mediation program is being implemented in six cities of Georgia and 74 juveniles have been diverted so far.

The importance of New Media has been discussed in Georgia during last few years. The advantage of new media is mainly in its democratic essence – users are the part of it as they participate in creating media product by themselves. According to experts, new media is still under development in Georgia and has less readers than traditional one, however, time by time it is becoming an alternative source of information.

Human Rights defenders in Georgia complain that during the last three years they have faced different forms of pressure and intimidation which have included threats or fabricated charges e.g., espionage, physical and verbal assault, and irregular inspections by state organs. They also complain about stigmatization and smear campaigns in media and by high ranking officials.

A delegation of the Human Rights House Foundation and Human Rights House Network´s members from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are taking part at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The delegation will have meetings with the country rapporteurs, the Commissioner for Human Rights and the rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in the Council of Europe.

The Human Rights House Foundation, together with partner organisations from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and the Russian Federation, took part at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation meeting in Warsaw on 25-29 September 2011. It made several interventions, addressing human rights issues in the countries, co-organised side events on Belarus and protection of human rights defenders and organised a protest campaign against the arrest of Ales Bialiatski. Maria Dahle, the Executive Director of HRHF, opened the 3rd working session on freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of association, national HR institutions and HR education.

The Human Rights House Foundation (HRHF) voiced its concerns about the human rights situation in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kenya at the UN Human Rights Council session.