Advocacy for Implementation of Anticorruption Legal Advice Centre in Georgia

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Through its Anti-Corruption Legal Advice Centre (ALAC), TI Georgia advocated on citizens' behalf and raised their awareness of legal rights and protections. Clients received free of charge consultations and assistance in administrative disputes with a Government agency. The Legal Advice Centre in Georgia opened only in 2009. Transparency International Czech Republic, our sister-organization, had several years of experience in operating a similar centre. The project was aimed at exchanging experiences and lessons learned between the two TI chapters and helped to further improve the services and consultations TI Georgia provided.
The partnership with TI Czech Republic contributed to a strengthening of the professional capacity of TI Georgia. It helped to increase the capacity of ALAC staff and helped to provide outside feedback on its work and also raised awareness about anti-corruption activities and ALAC work in general among journalists and NGOs in Georgia trough meetings in Tbilisi and Kutaisi.
TI Georgia successfully built relationships with civil society organisations that also provide free consultations to citizens and have specific expertise, as well as journalists who are covering relevant issues. The project helped to better advertise TI Georgia’s free legal consultations and to encourage residents in rural areas to consult ALAC staff and report cases of potentially involving misconduct or corruption.
In October, both TI Georgia and TI Czech Republic also hosted a workshop in Tbilisi to discuss transparency and accountability in state procurement, engaging leading officials from the Georgian State Procurement Agency, various other government agencies as well as civil society representatives.
Meanwhile, ALAC has also become a key tool for TI Georgia to learn about cases that involve corruption, violate citizen’s rights or expose loopholes in the legal framework. Some of the cases our ALAC lawyers worked on exposed systematic problems, for example violations of property rights in areas where government-driven investment projects are taking place.