Human Rights Center, Article 42 of the Constitution, Justice International, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and the Georgian Center for Psychosocial and Medical Rehabilitation of Torture Victims are responsible for the content of the report. The views and opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the position of the OSGF. Accordingly, the Open Society Georgia Foundation is not responsible for the contents of the report.
We are members of the Georgian and International Coalitions for the International Criminal Court, involved in international justice matters over the last two decades.
A big part of our activities in this area concerns the 2008 conflict between Georgia, Russia and Georgia’s breakaway region of Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia. After the conflict, we have provided legal aid and rehabilitation services to thousands of victims through our Tbilisi and regional offices. We have also documented war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the conflict. This documentation has been compiled in the report – In August Ruins, which was later communicated to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2009.
Since then, we have been regularly advocating for an international investigation of crimes committed during the 2008 conflict. Apart from the ICC, we have carried out numerous efforts to seek justice for victims at local as well as regional level. Attempts at local level turned out less effective as national investigations in Georgia and Russia failed due to inability and/or political unwillingness to prosecute potential perpetrators. At the international level, hundreds of applications were lodged, on behalf of over 1000 victims, with the European Court of Human Rights.