Giorgi Gogia

Giorgi Gogia is an expert on human rights issues in South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. He has worked and written extensively on criminal justice system reform, police brutality, freedom of expression and media freedoms and property rights. He also worked and written on international humanitarian law during the armed conflicts and health and human rights. While at Human Rights Watch, Giorgi has documented excessive use of force by police in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan as well as media freedoms in Azerbaijan. He also documented human rights and humanitarian law violations during the Georgia-Russia conflict over South Ossetia in 2008, and the rights of ethnic Georgians who returned to their homes in Abkhazia, another of Georgia’s breakaway regions. He is also chair of Human Rights Watch’s Fellowship Program.

Before joining Human Rights Watch, Giorgi worked for International Crisis Group as a senior analyst, researching and writing on protracted conflicts in the South Caucasus – Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. A graduate of Central European University in Hungary, Giorgi is a PhD candidate in political science at Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia. He speaks Georgian, English, and Russian.