As the first anniversary of the war with Russia approaches on Saturday, the international spotlight is briefly flickering back onto Georgia. The country that we see faces an uncertain future. The optimism and excitement generated by the Rose Revolution and the first few years of rapid reform has dissipated. The events of November 2007 on the streets of Tbilisi and August 2008 in Tskhinvali have dramatically shaken the West’s previously almost reflexive support for President Saakashvili. As a contribution to that growing debate the Foreign Policy Centre has published Spotlight on Georgia, a new pamphlet on human rights and good governance in Georgia and what the EU can do to help.
Georgia’s decline in the eyes of the international human rights community has been marked by falling rankings in a number of key areas. The decline in freedom of the press has been charted by Reporters without Borders who ranked Georgia 120th in its 2008 Press Freedom Index, a significant fall from 66th in 2007, while Freedom House’s 2009 report showed Georgia’s worst performance in 10 years across a range of democracy and governance areas. Rising international disquiet has mirrored growing domestic discontent, particularly following the severe crackdown on demonstrators in November 2007 when the government used excessive force to disperse a series of largely peaceful demonstrations in Tbilisi. The country has been wracked by street protests ever since, most notably in April 2009.
It is important to see Georgia for the country it is rather than the one we would like it to be. Since Saakashvili took over in 2003, Georgia has been one of the better performing ‘countries in transition’ rather than a new fully fledged democracy and its performance has stalled or got worse in recent years. The challenge then is to look at how we can best assist Georgia to get back on the right track. The answer provides a clear opportunity for Labour as it looks to the next election and beyond.
Georgia is just one example of a country on Europe’s borders where it is by working in concert with our European partners that Britain can most effectively influence events and make the case for improving human rights. Until now European Neighbourhood Policy has yet to live up to billing but it is slowly developing a cohesive identity that can do far more than 27 states could do acting independently in countries on the edge of our continent.
The EU’s new Eastern Partnership provides an important opportunity to help Georgia, and five other former Soviet states, recommit to reform and the transition to fully functioning democracy. The EU needs to develop clear human rights benchmarks and establish a permanent governance and human rights monitoring team attached to the existing EU presence in-country (but separate from the EUMM observing the borders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia).
Ultimately, improvements in the EU’s benchmarks and monitoring must not only deliver increased moral and political pressure for reform, they should also be clearly linked to the economic aid and trading relationships that the EU develops with Georgia. Eastern Partnership offers countries the opportunity to upgrade their Partnership and Cooperation Agreements (PCAs) to full EU Association Agreements that include “deep and comprehensive free trade agreements”. Our pamphlet argues strongly that such free trade agreements should be contingent on meeting a set level of performance against the human rights and governance benchmarks. Georgia’s need for funds to weather the economic crisis provides an important lever to pull, linking tranches of support to improvements in human rights.
The EU’s role in Georgia, or for that matter any country, goes beyond a monitored mix of incentives and penalties. It has a vital job to do in providing practical support and political engagement. The EU needs to work pragmatically with the current government while continuing to try to bridge the divide between Saakashvili and his opponents. At the same time it needs to call for deep reforms to Georgian institutions and offer technical assistance to bring change about. Our report calls for the creation of an Independent Police Complaints Authority, based on the model of the UK’s IPCC, and steps to strengthen the independence of the Georgian National Communications Commission and High Council of Justice. UK bilateral assistance can play a valuable role in some of these areas but is unlikely to have a significant impact on its own.
Current Conservative opposition to the Lisbon treaty that would unify the separate strands of European foreign policy into a more cohesive whole and their scepticism about the EU foreign policy, not to mention the EU itself, would leave Britain without the platform to exert the influence needed to push the cause of reform. By developing a more robust neighbourhood policy at a European level we can do much more to improve human rights standards in our near abroad than we can alone. Making a positive case for Europe is often seen as an electoral risk for Labour but the opportunity is there to argue that by working together at an EU level we can achieve more for those in need of our assistance than we can do alone.