Georgia’s Civil Society Organizations address the Vice President of the United States of America with an open letter ahead of his visit to the country. The CSOs highlight Georgia’s achievements and remaining challenges in terms of democracy and security. The authors underscore importance of the strong U.S. support to Georgia and ask the Vice President Pence to continue support in the areas of democratic institution building, security, countering Russian occupation, and on Georgia’s NATO membership path.

The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) has released the first interim report on the monitoring of the pre-election environment. The GYLA was observing the pre-election processes through up to 20 monitors from its central office in Tbilisi and eight regional offices covering nine regions of Georgia: Adjara, Guria, Imereti, Shida Kartli, Kvemo Kartli, Kakheti, Mtskheta-Mtianeti, Samtskhe-Javakheti, and Samegrelo.

Despite the fact that the election campaign has not yet officially started, due to the existing political context, on June 1 the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) started the pre-election monitoring of the 2017 local self-government elections.