A group of 24 countries have invoked the OSCE’s ‘Moscow Mechanism’ over Georgia’s deteriorating human rights situation. The mechanism enables participating countries to send a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights abuses in a member country of the OSCE. Under the rules, the mission can go forward even if Georgia decides not to participate.
The Moscow Mechanism has been enacted 17 times since its establishment in 1991, with most recent cases being connected to Russia and Belarus.
‘We have followed closely and with increasing concern the human rights situation in Georgia’, Sweden’s OSCE representative Anna Olsson Vrang said on Thursday.
She added that a number of member states previously invoked a lower-tier mechanism to ‘express concern’ about Georgia in December 2024.
‘However our concerns about implementation of shared human dimension commitments and international human rights obligations by the Georgian authorities have only increased’.
Under the Moscow Mechanism, participants will ‘establish a fact-finding mission to assess Georgia’s implementation of its OSCE commitments, with a particular focus on developments since spring 2024’.
Georgia has the opportunity to respond to the invocation of the mechanism and participate in the fact-finding mission, but its refusal would not prevent the mission from moving forward.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
