Shalva Papuashvili: IPU Assembly enables direct contact to advocate for our non-recognition policy with otherwise inaccessible counterparts

“The election for President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union was held today. For the next three years, the Union will be led by the Speaker of the Australian Parliament, with whom we have good relations,” Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said.

According to him, the Inter-Parliamentary Union format gave the Georgian delegation an opportunity for collegial cooperation.

“Within this Union, we had the opportunity to engage in collegial cooperation. I think the Assembly was very successful. The meetings we held were important for our delegation. I had the opportunity to hold a bilateral meeting with the Speaker of the UK Parliament. We discussed bilateral ties and the importance of restoring relations to their traditional strategic path, and we outlined practical steps to achieve this. I am confident that we will soon have the opportunity to communicate with him. I also had the opportunity to meet the Speaker of the Parliament of Nauru for the first time since Nauru revoked its recognition of the so-called independence of the territories occupied by Russia. We thanked them for making the right decision. Of course, we expect the non-recognition policy to continue bearing fruit. Syria and Venezuela are next. The Georgian government is actively working to ensure these nations revoke their recognition of the occupied regions’ so-called independence. The Assembly offers a direct way to connect with otherwise hard-to-reach counterparts to advocate for our non-recognition policy. This is not merely a Georgian issue; it fundamentally concerns the rules-based international order, which, if breached in one corner of the globe, will inevitably destabilise another. So this concerns everyone. It does not concern Georgia alone; it concerns every single country. If the principles of international law are not respected in Georgia’s case, they will be easily violated in other cases too,” Papuashvili said.