In order to strengthen public trust in the assessment and results of elections, it is crucial that the electoral process take place in a fair and calm environment. The responsibility for this process falls on not only the authorities. Rather, it shou

To the President of Georgia Mr. Mikheil Saakashvili: The upcoming 2010 local government elections are seen within and outside Georgia as another democratic litmus test by which conclusions will be drawn as to whether or not the Georgian government an

Georgia’s commitments as described in the European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan (ENP AP) involve reforms in almost all policy areas. While the government has already achieved tangible results in several policy directions, more action must be

In Georgia the judiciary has traditionally been viewed as one of the most corrupt institutions, best avoided at any opportunity. Hence the need for judicial reform has always ranked high on the government’s agenda, from the Shevardnadze era to

On February 12, 2008, President Saakashvili announced in his annual state of the nation address the introduction of a new co-financed health insurance scheme. The scheme potentially covers the one million people not covered by other free government b

State-financed employment programmes have become a new tradition since 2006. While the true scale of the unemployment problem in Georgia is misrepresented by the official statistics, the actual magnitude of unemployment is acknowledged by the heavy f

For a country like Georgia with some 50-55% of the population living below the poverty line and some 15% living in conditions of extreme poverty, the need for a coherent and sustainable social security policy is urgent. Georgia inherited the Soviet s

Two major developments have characterized activity in Georgia’s defence sector since the 2003 Rose Revolution: intensified effort to hasten Georgian accession to NATO and, correspondingly, large-scale infrastructural and long-term planning refo

National statistics, among many other policy issues, is given significant attention in the European Neighbourhood Policy Action Plan (section 4.5.5). The ENP AP stipulates that reform of national statistics should take two forms: first, statistical m

Civil service reform is arguably a cornerstone of economic, political and social restructuring of the Georgian state. On one hand, a reformed civil service should provide effective mechanisms for the performance of state institutions. On the other ha