The Georgian Dream party restricted civil and political rights in 2025 by fundamentally changing the legal framework and state policies in contradiction to international human rights standards. This included amending the Administrative Offences and Criminal Codes, Law on Grants, Law on Common Courts, Law on Broadcasting, the law on Freedom of Speech and Expression, and adopting the "Foreign Agents Registration Act" (FARA). These legal measures were preceded by the establishment of the State Grants Management Agency to align CSO funding and activities with "national priorities," and, with that, to alternatively create the parallel pro-governmental civil society space. In October-November 2025, through new amendments, the Georgian Dream government authorised mandatory administrative detention and even criminal liability for peaceful, protest-related activities, extended restrictions on public protests, and initiated the abolition of the Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Personal Data Protection Service.
In a broader crackdown on media, civil society, and opposition groups, on January 28, 2026 the Georgian Dream party, announced a batch of new changes to repressive laws that will further limit access to funding, in violation of international standards. The proposals set to be adopted on February 3, would further tighten control over foreign funding by expanding what counts as a grant requiring government approval, criminalizing violations with penalties of up to six years in prison, with harsher sentences of 9–12 years for aggravated offenses such as alleged “money laundering” tied to political activities.
To prevent democratic backsliding in Georgia and safeguard the basic human rights and freedoms enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Georgia is a member state, it is crucial to leverage all available diplomatic and institutional avenues to address the critical human rights and security situation in the country. This should include robust support for at-risk media (which suffered over 600 attacks during 2025) and civil society while formally advocating for the repeal of restrictive legislation.
#1 Freedom of peaceful assembly further restricted and violated
Cracking down on protesters through mass arrests and fines
In October-November 2025, the Ministry of Internal Affairs detained several hundred participants of peaceful protests, and the court sentenced them to administrative arrests. There were instances of forceful arrest of peaceful protesters on pedestrian sidewalks. One protester was detained under Criminal Code amendments for repeated blocking of the road. These events were further exacerbated by the Georgian judicial system's unconditional acceptance of the investigative party’s motions, failing to address the legality of the arbitrary arrests and lack of evidence. In one of such instances, in the case of the activist Tamar Giorgadze, who was arrested under the alleged accusations of blocking the road, the court postponed the hearing several times in anticipation that the police would provide the CCTV camera recording proving she was blocking the road and not standing on the pedestrian sidewalk. The use of legal mechanisms as a tool for repression is also evident from the last practices of imposing administrative fines on civil society and media representatives for critical Facebook posts and alleged road blocking.
Latest legal amendments expand the scope of restrictions
The latest amendments, as of 10 December 2025, extended the restrictions under the law of Georgia "On Assemblies and Manifestations" to additional public spaces. The law mandates that organisers of peaceful protests held on pedestrian sidewalks submit an advance notice of the gathering to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The new rules also require protesters not to impede the movement of pedestrians. In case of a violation of this rule, based on the assessment of the police officers, a person can be subjected to administrative arrest for 15–20 days, depending on their protest participant status.
In early January 2026, the Tbilisi City Court dismissed several administrative offense cases for allegedly obstructing pedestrian movement against protesters, including Giorgi Tsulaia, after citing elements of criminal liability. The cases were redirected to the Tbilisi Police Department for further investigation. On 23 January 2026, the Tbilisi City Court sentenced five protesters to a few-day administrative arrest for standing on a pavement during a peaceful protest. The incidents reflect a broader pattern under Georgia’s new restrictive protest laws, where even protesting on the pavement can be escalated to arrests.
#2 Abuse and dismantling of state institutions for repression
On 17 November 2025, the Georgian Dream initiated the abolition of the Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Personal Data Protection Service. Although these institutions were established under EU recommendations, to function as independent bodies for countering corruption and addressing personal data violations, they lacked genuine independence from their inception. While the official justification for their dismantling cites resource optimisation and institutional consolidation, the Georgian Dream party's continuing attempts to implement restrictive legal norms and practices demonstrate their political shift away from European integration principles and toward the accumulation of executive power.
The lack of genuine independence within these institutions allowed the Georgian Dream to repurpose them as levers for a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, weak counter-corruption bodies failed for years to act on credible high-level corruption cases that independent CSO groups raised. On the other hand, the same institutions were used to target and create the restrictive environment for the CSOs’ space as a whole. Consequently, the Anti-Corruption Bureau which was intended to oversee and facilitate the anti-corruption efforts, instead effectively became an institutionalised mechanism for penalising and silencing independent civil society. During 2025, Georgia’s Anti-Corruption Bureau launched an unprecedented campaign targeting independent media and CSOs, demanding sensitive documentation without providing clear legal justification. By December 2025, this approach expanded to wide range of the organisations, including court-ordered demands for confidential data regarding individuals receiving legal protection. Meanwhile, several high-ranking officials were arrested for money laundering and other financial crimes, whose asset declarations monitoring was under the Bureau’s mandate. Thus, the Anti-Corruption Bureau, instead of acting under its mandate to monitor public officials’ asset declarations and compliance, visibly failed to facilitate counter-corruption activities.
Similarly, the Personal Data Protection Service failed to address severe violations of privacy related to the recent persecution of activists. These individuals were victims of CCTV surveillance and the seizure of their personal electronic devices by law enforcement authorities following their participation in peaceful protests.1
The subsequent initiative to abolish these institutions, shortly after their role as repression lever suggests that the state’s intent was never to reform them, but to dismantle the very concept of independent checks and balances. By March 2026, the functions of the Anti-Corruption Bureau and Personal Data Protection Service will be transferred to the State Audit Office of Georgia and by the others within the system.
#3 Criminalisation and attacks against civil society
Since February 2025, the Georgian General Prosecutor’s Office launched a state-led criminal prosecution against civil society, leading to the seizure of bank accounts belonging to major human rights organisations like the Tbilisi Human Rights House, Sapari, Social Justice Center, and others. Under the bogus charges of investigating "sabotage" and "hostile foreign activities," the Prosecutor’s Office targeted groups for providing legal aid and protective gear to pro-European protesters. Considering this pressure, many civil society groups faced the risk of not only being forced to cease their activities but also of being persecuted.
On 1 December 2025, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) published the BBC Eye investigation suggesting the Georgian Dream government used water cannons laced with a chemical weapon, bromobenzyl cyanide (Camite), against its own citizens to disperse the 2024 protests. The documentary also interviewed injured participants. In response to the BBC documentary, the Georgian State Security Service launched a criminal investigation under two Criminal Code Articles - on abuse of official authority (Article 333 of the Criminal Code) and assistance to a foreign organisation in hostile activities (Article 319 of the Criminal Code). Within this investigation, the State Security Services summoned those individuals who gave interviews to the BBC journalists, including the representatives of the human rights groups.
In only few days, between 1-6 December 2025, the State Security Services claimed to conduct over 160 investigative actions, question 93 individuals, conduct forensic chemical testing on 25 samples, and seize official documentation from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Revenue Service to complete the chemical identification portion of its investigation. On 6 December 2025 they concluded that police did not use the "WWI-era" substance Camite alleged by the BBC. However, they pledged to continue a broader probe into whether the documentary sources, by providing information to investigative journalists, in the eyes of the GD "assisted a foreign organisation" to engage in"hostile activities"The questioning raised concerns about the lack of transparency in the investigation, highlighting the fact that for a year, the Georgian Dream government had failed to investigate the abuse of power, use of torture and publicly reveal the chemicals used in water cannons despite calls from the credible Georgian human rights groups. The findings into torture and systemic human rights violations during the dispersal of the mass protests were documented and published by eleven Georgian human rights organisations.
Increased attacks and state aggression aimed to criticise and stigmatize organizations
On 16 December 2025, the Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, in his interview with the State Broadcaster strongly dismissed the notion of civil society in Georgia, undermining public trust in local groups as organisations funded by foreign governments for the purpose of an intervention.
This and previous statements from the Georgian Dream party representatives and their supporters create a significant risk of further dismantling the civil society space in Georgia.
The state-led narrative of criticizing and stigmatizing civil society organizations, coupled with repressive legal mechanisms and practices, bears a high risk of limiting both the activities of existing groups and the future registration of any organizations deemed undesirable by the Georgian Dream party.
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IDFI (Information and Democracy Initiative) claims the Personal Data Protection Service (PDPS) has failed to act against illegal personal data processing, specifically regarding the surveillance of protestors, which IDFI deems an unjustifiable and illegal refusal to exercise its authority. This assessment stems from IDFI's view that the PDPS has not adequately responded to alleged violations of personal data protection laws by authorities.