Human rights-based Justice System is essential for government accountability at every level. Our strategy focuses on accountability for grave crimes and protection of fundamental rights. We channel our efforts in combating torture and ill-treatment, actively work on pre-trial justice and liberalization of criminal justice policy, and institutional reforms in justice sector.

Throughout the next years, we will focus on the creation of an independent investigative body and on increasing public oversight of closed institutions.

With regard to the ICC's recently opened investigation, we see the Foundation's role in helping the civil society with understanding the past experiences, opportunities and challenges for international accountability, as well as facilitate their engagement in the process.

For many years, OSGF has been deeply involved in Georgia's criminal justice reforms. The foundation has supported numerous systemic reforms, including the development of Georgia's legal aid system. We have also supported targeted research to document and expose the deficiencies of the ‘Zero Tolerance' policy, which incorporated harsh sentences for organized crime, corruption, minor crimes, and drug-related offenses.

As a result of our interventions, the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code have been reviewed and new amendments are still being proposed to the Parliament. State surveillance activities and protection of the right to privacy are under NGO scrutiny. Additionally, steps have been taken to improve prison conditions, the witness interrogation system has been partially amended, and reforms of the Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Interior initiated.

However, there are a number of outstanding issues, which undermine fundamental rights, and warrant our involvement. Our activities will focus on: introducing a system of criminal misdemeanors to end the abuse of administrative detention; bringing the regulations governing covert surveillance in compliance with the Georgian Constitution and the European standards; and abolishing witness intimidation practices.

We intend to achieve these three goals by supporting activities of a criminal justice working group - a coalition of NGOs, which unites over 10 partner organizations. We will issue grants to the working group to scrutinize the daily practice of the reformed law enforcement agencies and evaluate their transparency. In addition, we will support monitoring of the newly adopted witness interrogation rules, and strategic litigation efforts of the group members. Apart from this, we aim to build on the recent judgment of the Constitutional Court on our claim to declare the current system of surveillance unconstitutional. According to the judgment, the Parliament is obliged to change the system within a year, so we anticipate to engage in this reform in 2017.

In addition to the working group, we will continue our cooperation with JI and HRI on these matters, as well as with the national foundations of Ukraine and Moldova, and Eurasia Program, so as to bring a regional dimension to our joint efforts.