U. S Department of State has published its annual Report on Human Rights Practices.

The most important human rights problems reported during the year 2012 in Georgia were: violation of the rights of prisoners, lack of independence in the Court and the problems of internally displaced persons.

Apart from these problems, the report paid attention to the cases of corruption and lack of transparency in the Government of Georgia. The document also mentions the matter of the new Parliament building.

Based on the publications of the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), the U.S. Department of State reported that the new building of the Parliament of Georgia cost $196 million, substantially higher than the original estimate.

Problems existing in field of Freedom of Information and data accessibility were also outlined in the report. The report says that, despite the fact that the law provides for public access to government meetings and documents, the government sometimes did not provide access of these public documents and the availability of information.

The statistics from the replies of the public institutions to the requests of public information in 2011-2012 complied by IDFI was used in the Report on Human Rights Practices.

IDFI regularly requests public information from public institutions in its “Public Information Database” project. The project is being implemented with the support of the Open Society Georgia Foundation.

The document published by the U.S. Department of State mentions that: “In the IDFI’s field tests conducted in 2011-12, the governmental agencies provided complete responses to 53 percent of the requests for public information. Executive government bodies refused to respond, ignored the requests for information, or provided incomplete responses in 47 percent of the requests for public information. IDFI reported that the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Corrections and Legal Assistance, and the Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation completely ignored their 2011-12 field test requests for public information”.