Tbilisi: Rati Bregadze The Minister of Justice of the Republic of Georgia met with the Deputy Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. During the meeting, both sides discussed the progress achieved in the field of human rights protection.
Rati Bregadze and Bjorn Berghe discussed the results of judicial and prison system reforms that are being implemented in Georgia as per the standard of the European Union.
Addressing the meeting the Minister of Justice noted the progress made by Georgia which is revealed by the statistics of cases entered from Georgia in the European Court of Human Rights. In particular, according to the data of January 2023, the European Court of Justice considered 147 complaints from Georgia, which is a historical minimum.
For comparison, in Strasbourg Court was considering 3045 cases against Georgia in past. Special attention was paid to the legal situation of prisoners to protect their legal rights, as the main purpose of prisons is to reform the lives of inmates.
The Minister of Justice stressed the fact that the systematic problem of inhuman treatment and torture in Georgian prisons has been completely eliminated as confirmed by a number of international authoritative organizations including the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman Treatment or Punishment (CPT).
It was noted that since 2012 the European Court of Human Rights has not received any complaints from Georgian prisons in production. The parties further discussed the new Penitentiary Code, “Digital University”, inmate rehabilitation and socialization projects, a strategy for replacing large-scale open penitentiary institutions with smaller prisons and more.
Both sides further discused the importance of enforcing decisions made by the Strasbourg Court on interstate cases, according to which the Russian Federation is responsible for mass violations of human rights during the war of August 2008.
The importance of effective cooperation with the Council of Europe in the process of Georgia’s integration into the European Union was emphasised. It is to be added that the meeting was attended by Deputy Minister of Justice Beka Dzamashvili.
