Special Report of the Civic Platform “No to Phobia!”

Member organizations of the civic platform “No to Phobia” present a special report “Equality Policy Amidst Hate Crimes in Georgia”.

The report primarily addresses the policies and measures implemented by the state to counter hate crimes targeting specific groups. It focuses on the groups on which member organizations of the platform work and which are, unfortunately, the targets of hate crimes. These groups are: media representatives/journalists, individuals with different verse political or other perspectives, LGBTQI+ individuals, and religious minorities. Simultaneously, certain sections of the report explore the overall human rights situation of each of these groups to provide a comprehensive understanding of the context and magnitude of the issues at hand.

The document is based on the analysis of the events from 2021-2022 and the first half of 2023 and on the assessment of cases litigated by the member organizations of the civic platform, their reports, answers received through requests for public information and other publicly available information and statistics.

The report demonstrates the situation, tendencies and challenges in terms of combating hate crimes and, generally, protecting equality. The following challenges are identified:

• Inadequate prevention of hate crimes and ineffectiveness of investigations (for example, the failure to identify hate motive of a crime/to correctly classify a crime);
• Lack of trust of vulnerable groups towards the law enfocement;
• Shortcomings in statistics on hate crimes;
• The discriminatory rhetoric from the officials and its application as a political-populistic instrument;
• The alleged connection between the state and hate crimes;
• Worsening of the legislation through adoption of new discriminatory provisions instead of addressing the already existing ones;
• The disregard of the LGBTQI+ community on the policy level;

Thus, the report indicates that the state fails to properly ensure equality and does not make sufficient effort to fight hate crimes. On the contrary, it is even the reason behind the frequency of hate crimes due to its actions or omissions.

The present document contains recommendation the fulfillment of which will support the fight against hate crimes and the improvement of protection of equality.

The following organizations worked on the report: Georgian Democracy Initiative, Georgia’s Young Lawyers’ Association, Tolerance and Diversity Institute and Equality Movement.

The report is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) within the USAID “Unity Through Diversity” Program, implemented by the UN Association of Georgia. The contents are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government and UNAG.