State authorities target Social Justice Center with unscheduled inspection

On 19 June 2025, the Administrative Chamber of the Tbilisi City Court issued an order confirming that the Anti-Corruption Bureau has initiated an investigation into the activities of the human rights organisation Social Justice Center. The organisation is being investigated under the Law on Combatting Corruption, the Law on Grants, and the Law on Political Associations of Citizens. The authorities are demanding unrestricted access to information regarding the organisation’s work. The Social Justice Center plans to challenge this order in the Court of Appeal to protect their data.

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The Social Justice Center is a human rights organisation based in Tbilisi, Georgia, dedicated to promoting human rights and social justice. Founded in 2012, the Center aims to address inequalities by creating a fair, inclusive, and democratic environment for all. It advocates for an inclusive understanding of citizenship and develops social and economic policies grounded in social justice, solidarity, and human rights. The Social Justice Centre seeks to improve the accessibility and human rights-standards of the Georgian justice and law-enforcement system. The organisation works with a wide range of groups, including women, children, people with disabilities, workers, LGBTQI+ people, ethnic and religious minorities, foreigners, environmental activists, prisoners, and clergy members.

As part of the investigation against the Social Justice Center, the Georgian Anti-Corruption Bureau has requested access to the organisation’s legal, technical, and financial data covering the period from January 2024 to June 2025. The Bureau also demands detailed information about the support provided to the Centre’s beneficiaries, including their personal information, as well as information about the organisation’s correspondence. The Social Justice Center has reported that the court order requires them to comply with this request within just three days.

According to a briefing circulated by the Social Justice Center, six other organisations received the same court order on 18 and 19 June 2025. During a briefing on 18 June, Razhden Kuprashvili, the head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, stated that the requested information would be used to examine the purpose of the activities of organisations that receive grants or engage in political activity. In their motion submitted to the Court the Anti-Corruption Bureau requested information from organisations based on four laws: the Law on Combatting Corruption, the Law on Grants, the Law on Political Associations of Citizens, and the Law on Registration of Foreign Agents (FARA). The Court granted the Bureau’s request based on the first three laws mentioned but did not mention the Foreign Agents Registration Act in its ruling. Lawyer Saba Brachveli stated in an interview that, although the Court granted the Bureau’s request on three legal grounds, the ruling should have included reasoning as to why the motion was not granted based of the fourth law, FARA.

In April 2024, the Georgian Parliament adopted a Russian-inspired Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence which mandates that organisations receiving foreign funding register as “organisations pursuing the interests of a foreign power.” This law imposes reporting obligations that, subject human rights defenders to scrutiny and potential administrative penalties. In April 2025, the government enacted the Law on Registration of Foreign Agents (FARA), which requires individuals or organisations seen as acting in the interest of a foreign entity – often based on foreign funding – to register as foreign agents. Non-compliance may lead to sanctions and criminal penalties. This Law is similar to the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act in the United States. Human rights defenders who opposed the laws and joined the protests in Tbilisi in May 2024 faced a defamation and intimidation campaign.

Front Line Defenders expresses grave concern over the administrative harassment against the Social Justice Center for their peaceful and legitimate human rights work. It is alarming that such harassment is facilitated by a set of laws targeting organisations based on foreign funding. This undermines the essential work of human rights defenders and organisations. Front Line Defenders emphasises that laws stigmatising foreign funding can have a lasting and significant impact on the development of human rights movements, severely restricting the ability of human rights defenders to carry out their work.

Front Line Defenders calls upon the authorities of Georgia to:

1. Immediately and unconditionally cease the malicious and unjustified investigation into the activities of the Social Justice Center;

2. Repeal the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence and the Law on Registration of Foreign Agents, as they aim solely to hinder the work of human rights defenders;

3. Guarantee in all circumstances that all human rights defenders in Georgia are able to carry out their human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions, in line with Georgia’s international human rights obligations and commitments.