On Thursday July 22, Chapidze received a long-awaited call from the Georgian United Nations Development Programme. The office in Zugdidi offered her a position as a “Coordinator of the Rule of Law Initiative and Conference Building Program.” As the closest city to the conflict-region Abkhazia, Zugdidi hosts approximately 80,000 internally displaced people.

“The program intends to carry out effective IDP social and economic rehabilitation and reintegration , encourage the creation of small business and support youth IDP activities,” Chapidze said.

Because she will be moving to Zugdidi, a city close to an hour away from GYLA’s Kutsisi Branch by car, Chapidze has hired a new member to her “Supporting Juvenile Justice Reform” team.

 Nino Khukhua, the new senior project assistant./ Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani

Starting on Wednesday, Nino Khukhua, 21, will serve as the Juvenile Justice Reform’s senior project assistant. She will supervise the project in Nana’s absence and carry out key project activities such as hosting seminars on the Conventions of Children’s Rights for at-risk youth. She will also monitor the progress of other legal assistants within the program.

With that said, Chapidze still intends to return to the GYLA office every Saturday in order to “plan activities for the following week and review the results of the activities of the previous week.”

Chapidze is certain the project will only benefit from this new position.

“The project staff consists of more than six assistants and they are well-educated and well-experienced,” Chapidze said. “I will gain more information about international and local NGOs and try to cooperate with them in order to enhance this project and make it wider in scale, maybe even spread it to Zugdidi for the internally displaced youth.”

Beginning only two weeks ago, the project is currently in its administrative stage.

At this meeting, Chapidze assigned tasks and deadlines to six other key team members, each of whom had their own passions and skills to contribute to the project’s completion.

Nodar Jikia, 45

-Completed a UNICEF sponsored Training Course on the Advocacy for Children’s Rights
-Founder and Director of programs of the GYLA Kutaisi Branch
-Teacher at Zurab Jvania State School of Administration on “The Legal Basics of Local Democracy”
-Lecturer at Akaki Tsereteli State Kutaisi University on “The Legal Regulations of Education”
-Regional Coordinator of a program entitled “Models of Integration in Georgia” at the Denmark External Affairs Ministry
-Working to compile a book aimed at engaging the youth in the electoral process and other functions of civil society

Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani

Research Consultant
-Research and analyze domestic and international legislation
-Monitor juvenile and juvenile offenders’ criminal justice rights in Georgia
-Asses the legality of juvenile programs
-Prepare legislative recommendations to strengthen juvenile justice programs
-Extend the project past the Kutaisi branch

Ana Chapidze, 27

-Practicing Lawyer at The Ministry of Penitentiary, Probation and Legal Aid of Georgia.
-Coordinator at The Center of Psychosocial and Medical Rehabilitation of Georgia
-Member of GYLA
-Member of Georgian Bar Association

Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani 

Program Consultant
-Provides practical knowledge about the state of juveniles in Georgia
-Represent juveniles in court affairs
-Serve as a connection between GYLA and the State
-Prepare memorandums with the Georgian Bar Association

Giorgi Chikaberidze, 26

-Lawyer and legal consultant to the GYLA Kutaisi Branch
-Member of the board of the GYLA Kutaisi Branch
-Member of the Georgian Bar Association
-Qualified to serve as a judge in the Georgian courts
-Participates in training sessions organized by The Council of Europe, The American Bar Association, Georgian High Commissioner of the United Nations, Article 42 of the Constitution, The Institute for State and Law, and various international NGO’s on topics such as the European Convention for Human Rights, Advocacy and Networking, Prohibition of Torture, Right to Fair Trial, Addressing the European Court for Human Rights, and Rights for Liberty and Person

Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani 

Program Consultant
-Provide legal consultations to parents, juveniles and other NGO’s
-Give legal consultations to juveniles whose rights have been violated during trial proceedings
-Represent juveniles at court

Nino Akhalaia, 21

-Third year law student at Chxorotsku Regional Secondary School with a concentration in Criminal Law

Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani 

Legal Studies Assistant
-Create and implement a training model for at-risk and delinquent juveniles
-Teach Georgian youth about their human rights in accordance with UN standards

Levani Vepkhvadze, 19

-First year law student at Akaki Tsereteli State University with a concentration in Criminal Law

Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani 

Legal Studies Assistant
-Request public information from the Kutaisi city and appellate courts
-Create relationships and connections with other local and international NGOs
-Monitor juvenile criminal court cases

Dariko Vadachkoria, 19

-First year law student at Akaki Tsereteli State University with a concentration in Criminal Law

Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani 

Legal Studies Assistant
-Analyze Georgian juvenile legislation and compare it with other legislative systems
-Propose and align new amendments with the UN human rights standards
-Create and implement a training model for at-risk and delinquent juveniles
-Teach Georgian youth about their human rights in accordance with UN standards

Over the course of the coming year, with the help of IBJ and support from GYLA, these seven dedicated team members will collaborate ideas, passions and skills in order to ensure a sustainable reformation of the Georgian juvenile justice system.

The Georgian Young Lawyers Association, Kutaisi Branch is not one to lose momentum. On the face of it, the budding young lawyers’ group seems to have an unbearably expansive mandate. But probe a bit deeper, and one invariably finds how its cohesion takes shape before an ailing set of state structures that have yet to fully respond to the needs and demands of Georgia’s most vulnerable populations. From human trafficking to domestic violence, from the plight of internally displaced persons to the needs of those whose socioeconomic realities and material dearth render them unable to access vital resources, GYLA’s concerns commonly find their loci in the field of social justice, and not solely in relation to state operations. Responsive not merely to the failures of the state justice system in terms of its norms and codes for official proceedings, GYLA also takes on the inadequacies that are produced by the much more stealthy culprit of structural violence- the implicit and unwieldy mechanisms of societal organization that produce inequalities of access and power. Ultimately, GYLA’s work consists in lending a voice to the voiceless and countering the apparatuses of structural violence that afflict the motions of daily life for so many.

Taken from GYLA’s mission statement, drafted in 1994, when the nation-wide organization was just beginning to gain ground, the following statement sketches the contours of the organization’s vision for Georgia, underscoring the philosophical basis for its vast range of pursuits: “We feel called upon to help build a country, where the public are not spectators but have legal awareness, where state institutions are transparent and accountable, where the rule of law rules and the government’s power is circumscribed by human rights.” This mandate has visibly spurred a number of efforts that form the makings of a veritable democracy, one that refuses to permit the reproduction of exclusionary and degrading policies and practices, whether they are officially statist or find their foundation in preponderant modes of social organization.

Conceived in 1988, as Georgia began to emerge from the thralls of the dissolving USSR, GYLA’s initial mandate was forged organically, from the impulses of a number of lawyers to challenge the indoctrination bearing upon most law students of the time, for it was demanded that they function more as auxiliaries of the “repressive state machinery” than as just practitioners of law. In 1994, when a group of ninety lawyers coalesced in the Schoolchildren’s Palace in Tblisi, GYLA was officially established, moved by a common set of principles: “We wanted to establish standards of legal profession. We wanted to stand on our dignity. We wanted to have a sense of siding with each other against what we thought was wrong.”

The organization’s brochures deal explicitly with the multifariousness of its objectives and are certainly not shy in asserting its fidelity to the vulnerable. Given the infancy of much of Georgia’s state infrastructure, GYLA has made it a mission to fill vacancies that are critical to democratic development. It offers its legal aid and consultation services free of charge to those in need, whose circumstances, largely material, would otherwise abandon them before cryptic legal systems. In the absence of civil society organizations like GYLA, such persons often find themselves bereft of the capacity to effectively assert their rights. Even more, GYLA remains committed to installing democratic frameworks of correspondence, incorporating all components of society, from civil organizations to citizens residing in rural areas, where the workings of official governance can seem so elusive.

GYLA, as a national organization, has branches spread across the country, serving different regions in myriad ways. Its regional offices operate in the following provinces: Ozurgeti, Gori, Rustavi, Dusheti, and Telavi, with affiliates in Ajara and Kutaisi. Of late, GYLA, Kutaisi Branch has focused upon decentralization so as to foment more robust democratic engagement by localizing people’s concerns and struggles. Furthermore, accountability and transparency on the part of government, two of GYLA’s more significant guiding principles, have proven more realizable within smaller frameworks, wherein local administrators and their constituents can effectively communicate. This is not to say that GYLA’s efforts are purely regional. They also participate in parliamentary proceedings wherein the constitutionality of federal legislative proposals and initiatives are assessed.

Advisors to state officials and citizens alike, GYLA, Kutaisi Branch’s approach counts upon the efficacy of correspondence and cooperation. In the absence of initiative on the part of all members of a democratic polity, GYLA’s vision of democracy cannot thrive. This is a great part of what spurs its efforts to engage with people who proclaim their apolitical leanings, a proclivity GYLA counters by illustrating the power of knowing your rights. The organization regularly makes visits to rural areas of Georgia, where people can claim to often find politics dispensable, and understandably so, as the corrupt and inadequate distributive mechanisms of government make it seem all the more impenetrable and useless.   

Nana Chapidze, revered member of GYLA, Kutaisi Branch, and winner of a 2010 Justicemakers’ Award from IBJ, is in the process of launching her project, “Supporting Juvenile Justice Reform.” Her work aims to institute a coherent and equitable juvenile justice system that aligns its aims and modes of operation with the norms and standards established in the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. The state, she has explained, has left a gnawing gap where deep reflection and systemic overhaul should be taking place. The criminal justice system has failed to institute a set of procedures and norms that explicitly respond to the particularities of criminal acts perpetrated by juveniles, and it has yet to consider the unique needs of children and adolescents. It has failed to take into account the circumstances that tend to propel juvenile misdemeanors, and there is consequently no framework in place to address the imperative of rehabilitative programs and services to (re)integrate at-risk juveniles into society. All of these issues weigh heavily even before one considers what a working juvenile justice scheme might really aim to achieve. In other words, the possibility of a restorative system of justice has yet to become conceivable in the halls of state bureaucracy. 

Beyond the work of “Supporting Juvenile Justice Reform”, the GYLA, Kutaisi Branch assumes the responsibility of a non-state actor that is thus well placed to effectively defend those whose rights have been violated by the state.
In the absence of GYLA, there would likely be little access to legal defense beyond that offered by the state. Without GYLA, there would likely be little means of thoroughly learning one’s rights and no way of procuring a defense unencumbered by the demands and pitfalls of wielding state power.  

I had a long conversation with Nana Chapidze, in which she detailed the most cogent efforts GYLA, Kutaisi Branch is currently undertaking. She described how its legal consultation services are younger than other initiatives and have really succeeded in rendering power accessible to the most socio-politically vulnerable members of society. Such consultations have proven profoundly momentous in the forging of a citizen body capable of honing its voice before a stark and often unresponsive set of bureaucratic legal structures. Counseling people on their rights and defending them in administrative, civil, and criminal cases, GYLA, Kutaisi Branch has been integral to the development of a strong regional democratic movement in the Imereti Region of Georgia, which includes Kutaisi.

Nana also described efforts underway in rural sectors of the region and in areas known as centers of collective resettlement, established by the state to serve internally displaced persons. IDPs in Georgia are casualties of the conflicts of the early 90s and the wars of August 2008 in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. As Nana said, “While there are several social aid programs and also rehabilitation efforts, they are not very effective. GYLA has gone to these centers, given legal consultations about state problems and services they can receive. These people have many different kinds of legal questions. They come here to the Kutaisi Branch office often.”

            Other beneficiaries of GYLA are those the state considers “Socially Protection-less People,” who are categorized as such in an administrative database overseen by the federal government. State agents purportedly visit families that might qualify for the status, and there are a number of different indicators used to determine the whether or not visited persons will meet the criteria.  GYLA works actively to engage these people and to ensure that they have a deepened understanding of their rights. Furthermore, the organization works through various means to counter the demoralizing effects that such a status can have on people’s democratic initiative and their access to the halls of power; to determine what must be done to bolster such powers and rights so that they concur with international standards and norms; and to thereby confront and alter the structural foundations of an non-egalitarian legal framework. Modifications such as that which Nana’s project seeks to undertake have proven deeply effective in countering the politics of exclusion that tend to bear heavily upon those enduring obdurate forms of inequality before the law.   

            Ultimately, GYLA is an organization grounded in a firm faith in the power of democratic engagement and commitment to dissolve institutions, both official and informal, which perpetrate inequalities. Women’s rights have assumed a measurable degree of importance in the past few years at GYLA, Kutaisi Branch’s headquarters. As Nino Tvaltvadze, Chairwoman of the branch, explained, describing a project she headed, student interns came together with seasoned legal experts in early 2006 for a yearlong crash course in women’s rights. Students were asked to assess the discrepancies between formal statist initiatives addressing women in Georgia and the frameworks established in international law to buttress the global pursuit of gender equality. They were asked to partake in simulated trials and legislative discussions, whereby they gained a deeper understanding of the legal hurdles advocates face in the struggle to give salience to women’s struggles in both local and international politics.  

            Such a vast array of approaches to the issues GYLA faces again emphasizes the immensity of the organization’s pursuits. With a mandate like GYLA’s, one cannot really wonder if it is taking on too much. One simply has to observe its people in action. When I spoke with Nana Chapidze, she reminded me again of how indispensable organizations like GYLA are in the quest to build robust democratic institutions, both in civil society and in the halls of government. She said, “In cases, where a citizen may be a victim of the bureaucratic system, when people’s rights are violated by state bodies, as a non-state actor, GYLA is able to undertake citizen advocacy campaigns, to hold public meetings for people, educating them about their rights, giving them information about how they can defend their rights, about what mechanisms they have in their hands.”

Chapidze discusses project implementation at the GYLA office / Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani

Born and raised in Kutaisi, Georgia, Chapidze has always been deeply connected to community development projects. As a law student, she became a legal aid assistant at the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA), an NGO that works to resolve the endless legal issues plaguing the post-Soviet republic. During this time, she worked to monitor the city’s human rights issues, most predominantly the ongoing presence of internally displaced people. She also held interactive training seminars for law students, hoping to strengthen both their and her own developing legal education.

Upon graduating from the well-respected Kutaisi University of Law and Economics in 2006, Chapidze became one of the five GYLA Kutaisi branch board members. As a board member she “participates in the decision-making process and organizes events and helps to set the priorities of GYLA’s activities.”

Chapidze discusses GYLA’s aims with another documentary journalist / Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani

Through GYLA, Chapidze has worked for Foundation Sukhumi, an NGO that works to bolster the rights of internally displaced people of the Sukhumi region. Additionally, Chapidze actively works for four other NGOs – The Kutaisi Information Center, The Imeriti Regional Center for Training and Consultations, Article 42 of the Constitution and The Human Rights Center. Among many other tasks, she helps these NGOs prepare applications for citizens, organizes initiatives for local self-government and teaches citizens about their legal rights.

As a JusticeMaker, Chapize has just kickstarted yet another human rights initiative. With funds and consultation from IBJ, Chapize hopes to reform Georgia’s juvenile justice system, ensuring that the Georgian youth receive a fair and objective trial, preventing the ruling of “adult time for adult crime.”

You can read more about her project here.

With this new project and the ongoing need to fulfill her endless responsibilities to other NGOs, “in this last year, I’ve had no free time,” Chapidze jokes.

Legal reference books in GYLA’s library / Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani

Listen to Nana summarize her project in her own words.

While time for recreational activities is few and far in between, in the ephemeral moments she spends on herself, Chapidze likes to listen to soft rock and classical music, go on picnics to the countryside with friends and read books by Ernest Hemingway , Herman Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Georgian writers such as Goderdzi Chockeli, Galaktion Tabidze. Her favorite books are Hesse’s Siddhartha and Hemingway’s Fiesta.