Projects

Project title: Promoting greater civic awareness and engagement in judicial reforms and facilitating increased access to justice through holistic multi-agency action

Donor: The European Union, represented by the European Commission,itself represented by the Delegation of the European Union to Georgia

Partner organizations: Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, Social Justice Center, Studio Monitor

Project duration: 01.01.2024 – 31.12.2026

Total amount of grant: EUR 967,343.37 

The amount received by IDFI: EUR 124,255 

The overall objective of the action: Promoting accessibility, independence, transparency, impartiality, and accountability within the justice system, including judicial reforms.

The activities to be implemented by IDFI:

 To improve access to reasoned court decisions, IDFI will implement the following activities:

- Producing annual monitoring reports on the accessibility of judgments from the Common Courts and the Constitutional Court of Georgia. To assess the accessibility of judgments from the Common Courts and the Constitutional Court of Georgia, a comprehensive methodology - the Judicial Transparency Index of Georgia - will be developed;

- Producing comparative analysis on the proactive disclosure of the reasoned judgments. Particularly, conducting extensive research on case law, legal acts,  recommendations, directives, and standards  from international bodies concerning the accessibility of court decisions;

- Monitoring the practical enforcement of the Constitutional Court of Georgia's judgment on the accessibility of judicial acts and producing the report. IDFI will identify the current legal and practical challenges and develop comprehensive recommendations to enhance public access to reasoned judgments of the courts;

- Initiating strategic litigation to overcome the barriers that currently impede public access to judicial acts. 

IDFI’s share budget for 2024-2026, including IDFI’s contribution:

Contract

Project Title: Core Support

Supported by: The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)

Grant Number: No. 16488

Budget: SEK 16, 500, 000 (Swedish kronor)

Duration: July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2026

Objectives of the Core Activities 

The goal of the project is to promote the Euro-Atlantic integration of the state, fight against corruption, improve the transparency and accountability of public institutions, increase citizen engagement in decision-making processes,promote the independence and impartiality of democratic institutions, achieve higher standards of rule of law, promoting inclusive economic policies, facilitating the democratic decentralization and the democratic transition processes, studying and analyzing Soviet past and countering disinformation, upholding media and human rights, and promoting innovations to solve outstanding problems.

Project Summary

Georgia has seen overall progress in building democratic institutions, developing good governance, transparency, and accountability principles and improving the effectiveness and fairness of governance over the past decades. These processes, however, have notably slowed down due to a number of reasons. The country is currently facing serious challenges, such as informal governance, unbalanced concentration of power, lack of judicial independence, high-level corruption, and lack of political will to continue with important reforms. In addition, political and economic pressure from the Russian Federation has a negative influence on Georgian democracy. Russian aggression in Ukraine had an impact on the region, as well as on Georgia’s political, economic, and international relations.

The named challenges reveal the clear necessity for civil society to support Georgia's democratic and pro-Western development and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic integration within its competence so that the state can make the most of the window of opportunity.  Having 14 years of experience improving the democratic process, promoting the principles of good governance, and successfully advocating structural and legislative reforms/changes, IDFI intends to counteract the existing challenges facing democracy and good governance in Georgia through evidence-based research, monitoring, and advocacy. More specifically, IDFI will work on the implementation of the EU requirements in various fields, towards key objectives of combating corruption, improving transparency of public institutions, increasing citizen engagement in decision-making processes, achieving higher standards of rule of law, promoting more inclusive economic policies, facilitating democratic decentralization and democratic transition processes, upholding media and human rights, and promoting innovations to solve outstanding problems.

To achieve these objectives, IDFI will work with all relevant public, private, and civil society stakeholders. The organization will also make active use of various local, national, and international networks and platforms in order to achieve positive change in target areas. Finally, special attention will be paid to achieving results at scale, by engaging important cross-cutting issues such as inclusion, education, the environment, and gender. The organization will focus especially on monitoring and watchdog projects and activities in Georgia and developing, consultancy, and capacity-building projects in the region and globally. 

Budget

Contract