“Everything is politicised in Gal because it is mostly populated by ethnic Georgians and it is located close to the border,” notes Diana Kerselyan, CHP’s project coordinator who is keen to stress that Gal region is part of their pan-Abkhazian activity scope. “Whatever you do there, you must be very careful to not cause harm to the people, because they can suffer even more if you make a mistake.”

Kerselyan recognizes the distrust the local administration has towards CHP as it often operates thanks to international financial funding. That said, the luck of trust extends to other segments of Abkhazian society.

“There are circles despicing us, they claim we protect the rights of Gal population, but we don’t care about the abkhazians’ and other people,” she laments. “It is just not true! We work all over Abkhazia. and if we look at the figures from our legal advice office, we can see that the majority people seeking legal advice are Abkhaz. Maybe there is a lack of information, maybe people are under the influence of propaganda in our complicated geopolitical context.”

Institute for Democracy

The Gal-based Institute for Democracy was founded in 2007 with the assistance of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) with a clear focus on human rights issues in the region.

“We work on establishing a communication line between the authorities and the local population”, explains Eduard Torua, one of the organisation’s leaders. “In Abkhazia, people usually approach NGOs who then reach out to the authorities. It would be far more effective if people could contact directly the officers in charge, without intermediaries.”

The Institue established the Public Support Group with representatives in fifteen communities in eastern Abkhazia. Each delegate would brief the organization about the general situation and security threats in the respective community and with this piece of information the Institute would then approach the authorities to discuss the eventual problems, organise meetings in the communities, so that locals could present directly the authorities what their problems are.”