Kobakhidze says NGOs in Georgia were tools of foreign governments

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said that what was presented as non-governmental organisations and civil society in Georgia was, in reality, an artificially constructed system operating on foreign state funding and promoting external interests.

According to Caliber.Az, citing Georgian media, Kobakhidze argued that genuine NGOs did not exist in the country. “In fact, there were no NGOs in Georgia. Essentially, these were foreign governmental organisations — structures funded by foreign states. And when the source of financing is of that nature, it naturally advances the corresponding interests,” he said.

The prime minister further stressed that there was no independent civil society either. “There are no non-governmental organisations — there are only specific structures financed by foreign governments to interfere in Georgia’s internal affairs. There is no civil society,” he stated.

Kobakhidze added that for many years these issues were deliberately ignored, and that the authorities only began addressing them openly in 2022, despite the sensitivity of the topic.

He recalled the public debate surrounding the adoption of the so-called “transparency” law, saying that many people had been misled at the time.

“You remember how many people were deceived when we passed the ‘transparency’ law and were told that it was impossible for funds coming from the West to be used for harmful, corrupt purposes, and people were kept in that false belief,” he said.

According to the prime minister, the assessments made by the Georgian authorities over the past three to four years are now effectively being confirmed by statements from representatives of the US administration, as well as by decisions to suspend the activities of organisations such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.

By Tamilla Hasanova