“Torture in Georgia, as a systemic failing, has been entirely eradicated,” declared Deputy Minister of Justice Beka Dzamashvili before the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Relations.

He further stated that international reports and assessments confirm that instances of torture in Georgia have been eliminated.

“For some considerable time now, international assessors, both UN experts and evaluators, as well as Council of Europe assessors, have acknowledged that torture in Georgia, as a systemic failing, has been entirely eradicated.

As far back as 2015, Juan Méndez, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, visited Georgia. He was the first to make the assessment that this systemic problem had been eliminated in Georgia. Over the past four years alone, we have hosted several visits from both the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture. Every one of their assessments and reports, which have been published publicly, indicates that instances of torture have been completely eradicated.

Georgia’s penitentiary system is entirely free from torture, and this is further demonstrated by the fact that since 2012, not a single complaint has been lodged before UN committees or the Strasbourg court and declared admissible, not only in relation to torture, but concerning any violation of rights within the penitentiary system more broadly. We take considerable pride in this, for it is the clearest possible indicator of the results that the reforms carried out within this system have delivered,” Dzamashvili stated.