Field Visits in Gori and Sagarejo municipalities

On August 18 and 19, the representatives of Human Rights Center, in the frame of the project “Free Legal Advocacy and Human Rights Monitoring After the COVID-19 Pandemic”, organized two field visits to the project targeted regions of Kakheti and Shida Kartli Regions.

 The project team members from the Tbilisi office and the lawyers from the local offices met citizens and informed them about the free legal aid Human Rights Center can offer them to advocate their breached human rights. In Kakheti region, the field visits were organized in Sagarejo municipality – in the town of Sagarejo and in the villages of Giorgitsminda, Ninotsminda and in Iormuganlo community villages (inhabited with ethnic Azerbaijani population). In Shida Kartli region, HRC representatives met citizens in Gori municipality villages – Karaleti, Tkviavi, Tirdznisi and Megvrekisi. During the meetings, the HRC representatives handed out the information brochures about the project activities. 

The locals said that during the state of emergency and afterwards they faced many social-economic problems: they lost jobs and respectively, the income; the banks increased interests on their loans; some of them stated that as they were self-employed they could not present necessary documents to the social agencies to get compensation for the lost income. There were citizens, who were fined by police during the state of emergency but had not appealed the penalties as they were not informed about free legal aid. It is noteworthy that a big part of the population was not aware of the social allowances and compensations they could get from the State Budget to compensate their loss incurred in relation to the state of emergency. 

 

The locals complained that they could not get allowances allocated to support agricultural activities. Some of them also complained about artificially created obstacles to receive the compensations. A part of them claimed that although they had their plots registered, the state institutions demanded them to re-register the plots while others received compensations without any delay. 

 

During the meeting, the local population expressed their fears about the expected second wave of pandemic and related social-economic difficulties. 

 

Human Rights Center implements the project with the financial support of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Georgia. The project aims to identify and raise awareness about possible human rights violations during and after the COVID-19 related state of emergency in Tbilisi and in 5 regions of Georgia – Shida Kartli, Kakheti, Kvemo Kartli, Imereti and Samegrelo. The project will raise public awareness about the state of human rights during and after the pandemic. The project was commenced on July 1, 2020 and will last until June 30, 2021.