fact finder
Georgia’s government claims it wants transparency about the funding of the country’s tens of thousands of NGOs. The law is based on the USA. She also warns of a Maidan in Georgia. What’s it?
How many NGOs are there in Georgia?
Since the emergence of mass protests against the “foreign influence” law in Georgia, posts about a supposedly high number of non-governmental organizations there have been distributed. Max Otte, the AfD’s 2022 federal presidential candidate, wrote of “25,000 NGOs, 1 per 148 citizens”. His source, an anonymous Twitter account, did not name the origin of the number.
The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Georgian Parliament from the ruling Georgian Dream party, Nikoloz Samcharadze, also used it. In a BBC interview he said: “We have 25,000 active non-governmental organizations in Georgia.” Calculated per capita, this is one of the highest numbers in the world.
The number of 26,000 NGOs can be found in a data sheet published by the European Parliament’s research service in 2019. However, there is already a caveat that it is difficult to estimate how many of these NGOs are actually active. Because it is easy to set up such an organization. Dissolving them, however, is a bureaucratic challenge. The research service refers to a report by the US organization USAID on civil society organizations from 2017.
If you look into it current report, USAID in October 2023 has published, there is much more concrete information: It says that out of 31,339 registered organizations, the National Statistics Office of Georgia only recognizes 4,051 as active. The “cumbersome liquidation procedure” is again cited as one reason for the big difference.
In addition, the more than 30,000 registered organizations also included public institutions that also had status as “non-commercial legal entities”. So MP Samcharadze should have quoted the state statistics agency with the correct figure of 4,051 when he meant “active NGOs”.
“Between 40 and 60 organizations are fairly prominent in the public eye, but there are often also small initiative groups in the countryside,” says political scientist Hans Gutbrod, who teaches at Ilia State University in Tbilisi. However, there is hardly any real western-style club system in Georgia.
Does the government want to achieve transparency with the “Agents Act”?
The Georgian government justifies the need for the law by saying that the people have a right to know who finances the tens of thousands of NGOs in the country. In fact, this transparency exists among organizations that receive funding from Europe and the USA. This can be easily understood, for example, with Transparency International Georgia, the election observation organization ISFED or the news platform civil.ge, if you enter their name together with the English word funding in the Internet search.
In addition, donors such as the EU, states or organizations in the USA usually have to submit annual reports with relevant information.
The EU, for example, says it will provide Georgia with 340 million euros in funds between 2021 and 2024, with the majority going to programs for the economy, institutions, the rule of law and other areas from which the state benefits – but which the Georgian government in turn does not discussed when she speaks of foreign influence. The EU gave civil society organizations an amount of 22.5 million euros between 2015 and 2022.
Transparency also about influence from Russia?
Theoretically, the law on “foreign influence” would also apply to donors from Russia and all other countries. But the Georgian government never talks about this. Opposition politicians find it difficult to record funds from Russia because “grey channels” are often used, for example bypassing the legislation on party financing, which prohibits financing from abroad. In recent years, however, Georgian journalists have found evidence that private individuals received money from Russia and donated it to pro-Russian parties.
The government apparently has no interest in uncovering and preventing such practices. MP Ana Natsvlishvili from the Lelo party says the ruling party has not even registered an opposition bill with nine steps against foreign influence for consideration in parliament.
NGO law based on the US model?
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which was introduced in the USA in 1938 to prevent political influence from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, is repeatedly cited as justification for introducing laws to register “foreign agents”.
However, there are clear differences to the law in Georgia. This requires registration from all organizations that receive more than 20 percent funding from abroad, for example aid organizations for the sick and disabled.
FARA, on the other hand, excludes organizations that solely serve religious, school, academic or scientific purposes or pursue the fine arts. Organizations that alleviate human suffering, for example through medical assistance, are also not affected. FARA also only affects organizations where an “agent” acts as an agent of another person who, in turn, has the right to control that “agent.”
For example, the Chinese state-controlled newspaper “China Daily” was registered as a “foreign agent” in the USA and was then subject to disclosure requirements but continued to be published in the USA. Critics of the law in Georgia, however, fear that, like the “agent law” in Russia, it will be used to restrict civil society.
At a press conference in Berlin, Prime Minister Iraqi Kobachidze also referred to alleged regulations of the EU Commission and comparable laws in EU countries. Chancellor Olaf Scholz replied that plans in the EU to combat foreign influence followed a different concept and were unlikely to be implemented. The European Court of Justice rejected a corresponding law in Hungary.
The majority of people in Georgia support this Ruling party?
Surveys from last year showed that the ruling Georgian Dream party could expect a majority again in the parliamentary elections in October, while most opposition parties would fail at the five percent hurdle. After the mass protests began, no serious surveys on this question were published.
On the other hand, these surveys have shown for years that 80 percent of people are in favor of joining the EU, including many voters of the ruling party, which has always stated that it is in favor of joining the EU, even if they only meet the admission conditions set by the EU partially fulfilled.
If the EU rules out starting accession negotiations as long as the governing party acts anti-democratically, voters will have to decide in the fall whether they want to vote for the “Georgian Dream” and thus against the further path to the EU. However, until then, the opposition parties must position themselves in such a way that they form an electable alternative.
A Maidan in Georgia?
The Georgian government speaks of “radical demonstrators” and warns of a slide into violent clashes and the country sinking into chaos, citing the Maidan protests in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014. Government opponents and opposition politicians such as independent MP Teona Akubardia However, they reject comparisons to the Maidan.
The protests have so far been peaceful on the part of the protesters. There is a friendly, sometimes exuberant atmosphere at the rallies in front of Parliament and other central places.
The police intervened especially when parliamentary debates were imminent and demonstrators threatened to block the entrances. Police forces attacked peaceful demonstrators several times, resulting in injuries and numerous arrests. Those arrested reported ill-treatment from police stations. Several prominent government opponents were beaten by men in masks.
However, the police have so far allowed the evening marches and blockades of the main roads in the capital Tbilisi and redirected traffic.
Akubardia also rejects the Maidan comparison because of the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in eastern Ukraine in the wake of the Maidan protests. The regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are already occupied by Russian troops since Russia’s 2008 war against Georgia.