The Ostrich Policy: Georgia’s International Isolation and Georgian Dream’s Method of Denying Reality

I. Introduction

On 8 July 2026, in The Hague, during the 33rd Annual Session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Georgian delegation walked out of the session hall in protest when the Assembly adopted the “Hague Declaration,” which also incorporated a resolution initiated by US Congressman Joe Wilson “on protecting the integrity of elections and fundamental freedoms in Georgia.”[1] Before leaving the hall, the head of the Georgian delegation stated that “the updated version of the declaration deliberately distorts the political reality in Georgia.”[2]

This step is significant not only because the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly was the last forum in which the Georgian delegation still enjoys voting rights (it should be recalled that Georgian Dream suspended its participation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) as early as January 2025)[3], but also because it represents a kind of culminating end to a two-month cycle during which four independent international institutions—the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and the UN Human Rights Council—one after another issued highly critical statements addressed to the Georgian authorities[4]. Specifically:

On 17 June, the European Parliament adopted a resolution emphasising that, under Georgian Dream’s rule, the country had suspended its European integration course and restricted the rights of civil society and the free media. The European Parliament called on EU member states to impose targeted sanctions on Bidzina Ivanishvili and the leaders of the ruling party.[5]

On 24 June, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolution No. 2664, “The functioning of democratic institutions in Georgia,” which spoke openly of a “breakdown of democracy” and noted that the authorities had implemented none of the Assembly’s previous recommendations, while the attempt to ban opposition parties was driving the country towards the formation of a one-party political system. The Assembly further demanded an effective and independent investigation into the possible excessive use of force by the police, as well as the repeal of the law “on the transparency of foreign influence” and the related legislative amendments.[6]

On 2 July, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) presented a critical report on Georgia at the 62nd session of the Human Rights Council, stating that the Georgian side had “not implemented most of the recommendations of previous reports, and that the human rights situation in the country had not improved but had, in fact, deteriorated.” In addition, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of expression noted that Tbilisi had been addressed on numerous occasions through official communications aimed at resolving the problem of shrinking civic space, yet to no avail.[7]

The culmination of all this was the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly declaration, which proved to be the last straw for Georgian Dream’s patience. This article examines three interrelated questions:

1. how fair the OSCE resolution is, and how accurately it reflected the conclusions of the report prepared under the “Moscow Mechanism”;
2. what this declaration means for future elections in Georgia and, more broadly, for the country’s international image;
3. and why Georgian Dream’s reaction is so sharp, and to what extent it matches the pattern of conduct of Russia and Belarus.

II. The Report Prepared under the “Moscow Mechanism” and the Hague Resolution: General Assessments

The principal argument of Georgian Dream’s representatives against the OSCE resolution is the contention that it supposedly misrepresented the conclusions of the report prepared under the “Moscow Mechanism” and published on 12 March 2026. To test the validity of this claim, two questions must be clarified: first, how well-founded are the objections raised against the report itself; and second, how accurately the conclusions and assessments of that report were carried over into the resolution of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

With regard to Georgia, the OSCE “Moscow Mechanism” was activated on 29 January 2026 at the request of 23 member states of the organisation[8], which is fully consistent with the requirements of paragraph 12 of the 1991 Moscow Document. Under that provision, an expert mission may be established at the request of a single participating state supported by at least nine others—that is, through the joint action of a minimum of ten states out of 57. Moreover, at no stage is a full-membership vote held, and the OSCE Permanent Council has no authority to block or annul the report once the mission has concluded. This procedure is designed precisely so that the specific state against which the mechanism is activated, or its allied countries, cannot block or obstruct the mechanism’s work. Accordingly, the Georgian Dream delegation’s claim that 34 OSCE member states, including the United States, France, and Spain, did not endorse the report’s conclusions when it was considered in the Permanent Council[9] is manipulative in nature and does nothing to diminish the reliability of a document prepared under the mechanism. Equally manipulative and untrue is the Georgian delegation’s statement at the Hague session on 7 July 2026 that the report was supposedly prepared in only “72 hours.”[10] The report’s author, Professor Patrycja Grzebyk, did indeed spend only three days in Georgia during her visit in February 2026[11]; her mandate, however, provided even before the visit for online meetings and the study of documents, work that had been under way over an extended period.

As for the report prepared under the “Moscow Mechanism” itself, the document concludes that Georgia is experiencing a “sharp democratic backsliding” and records numerous instances of violence and abuse of power against protesters, opposition leaders, and journalists that “at times reached the threshold of torture.” Moreover, there is “almost complete impunity” for those responsible for the violence.[12] In the Hague resolution of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the formulations of the report developed under the Moscow Mechanism were reproduced practically unchanged. In addition, the resolution expresses “deep concern” over the “significant violations” recorded during the parliamentary elections of October 2024, is “outraged” by the instances of falsification exposed during the 2025 local elections, and demands the release of “all political prisoners” and the repeal of the “restrictive legislation.”[13] Thus, the theses of the Hague Declaration are in full accord with the conclusions of the Moscow Mechanism.

III. What the Hague Declaration Means for Georgia and Beyond

One of the most important provisions of the Hague resolution calls on OSCE member states and the international community not to recognise the results of any elections in Georgia that credible international and domestic observation missions have not assessed as free, fair, and democratic[14]. One circumstance is important here: the formulation is cast in general terms and is not confined to the 2024 parliamentary or the 2025 local elections. Accordingly, the call extends to any future election that fails to meet the stated criteria. In practical terms, this means that the international recognition of the results of every subsequent election in Georgia becomes contingent on the implementation of institutional reform in the country; moreover, there is no deadline upon whose expiry this condition would automatically lapse.

The declaration also calls on the authorities to release “all political prisoners,” to repeal or revise the “restrictive legislation,” and—through consultations with the Venice Commission and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)—to launch fundamental reforms to restore the independence of the judicial system and the Central Election Commission, as well as to ensure a safe environment for civil society and independent media.[15]

This OSCE declaration cannot be considered in isolation from its context. As already noted, it represents a kind of unifying, culminating form of the documents adopted in the recent period by various international and European institutions. To put it differently: the state of democracy and human rights in Georgia is no longer the subject of a single, isolated document; it is now a fact recognised by international institutions, and this poses an exceptionally serious problem for the legitimacy of the Georgian authorities.

IV. Georgian Dream’s Reaction

The sharp reaction of Georgian Dream’s representatives to the Hague Declaration of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly—expressed both in the demonstrative walkout from the session hall and in the harsh public statements made afterwards—can be explained by several interrelated factors. Each of them accounts for the authorities’ position only in part, but taken together they form a relatively complete picture.

The first factor concerns the political and institutional significance of the declaration. OSCE/ODIHR is regarded as one of the most authoritative, experienced, and internationally recognised institutions in the field of election observation and assessment. The OSCE’s calling into question the legitimacy of each subsequent election in Georgia, and tying that legitimacy to the assessment of international observers, is a heavy blow to the Georgian Dream authorities, who—already after the 2024 parliamentary and 2025 local elections—are under pressure and partly in international isolation.

The second factor concerns the deterioration of the Georgian authorities’ relations with international parliamentary institutions. In January 2025, Georgian Dream suspended its participation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). At the same time, Georgia is practically excluded from the work of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly (the platform for cooperation between the European Parliament and the parliaments of the EU’s Eastern Partnership countries). Against this backdrop, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly remained one of the last significant European parliamentary formats in which the Georgian delegation took full part. The demonstrative walkout in The Hague may therefore be regarded not as a one-off act of protest, but as a further manifestation of an already established model of relations with international parliamentary institutions—and as another step towards self-isolation.

The third factor concerns the author of the declaration and his political role. The initiator of the Hague resolution is the American Congressman Joe Wilson, who is also the author of the “MEGOBARI Act,” passed by the US House of Representatives on 5 May 2025 by 349 votes and transmitted to the Senate. That act provides for the imposition of sanctions on persons (and their family members) responsible for undermining peace, security, stability, and sovereignty in Georgia, as well as for systemic corruption[16]. Although the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly resolution and the American bill are independent documents, the fact that they share a common author and are also aligned in substance creates, in the eyes of Georgian Dream’s representatives, the impression of a coordinated political attack. It is precisely in this context that the authorities’ especially harsh criticism of Joe Wilson may be explained.

The fourth factor is manifested in Georgian Dream’s own rhetoric. Government representatives initially sought to create the illusion of a certain constructive cooperation with the OSCE and to rebut the substance of the existing criticism with counterarguments. However, once they failed to persuade their partners and the authorities’ manipulative approaches became ever more evident, the rhetoric changed markedly and hardened. It shifted from criticism of individual documents to a wholesale rejection of international institutions and their legitimacy. The Georgian Dream authorities described international organisations as instruments of political revenge, spoke of their infringement of Georgia’s sovereignty, of a crisis of the rules-based international order, and of the need for a fundamental reset of the system of international cooperation. It should be noted, moreover, that these statements and this rhetoric coincide suspiciously with the statements of Russian and Belarusian government representatives.

V. Parallels with the Practice of Russia and Belarus

Georgian Dream’s reaction to the Hague Declaration naturally raised the question of how far it can be compared with the long-standing, well-established behavioural models of Russia and Belarus within international parliamentary institutions. Such parallels do indeed emerge, though they differ in terms of rhetoric and of institutional conduct.

From a rhetorical standpoint, the similarity is evident. In the official statements of Russia and Belarus, as in the assessments of Georgian Dream’s representatives, one encounters identical claims, namely:

• accusations that international institutions infringe upon state sovereignty;
• the portrayal of the adopted resolutions and reports as politically motivated or biased;
• the calling into question of their evidentiary basis;
• and the emphasis placed on the number and legitimacy of the states presented as initiators or supporters of particular decisions.

The convergence of these narrative elements in the statements of Georgian Dream’s representatives provides grounds for certain suspicions.

At the level of institutional conduct, the analogy is less clear-cut. At the 2026 Annual Session in The Hague, alongside the Georgian issue the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly adopted a no less critical resolution on Belarus; yet the Belarusian delegation did not walk out of the session hall. On the contrary, the delegation participated actively in both the plenary sessions and the work of the committees, held bilateral meetings, and spoke publicly of the need to restore political dialogue.

As for Russia, following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia’s participation in the work of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has been significantly restricted, while that same year the country was expelled from the Council of Europe. If one compares the behavioural model of the Russian delegations with the démarches carried out by Georgian Dream, a certain analogy may be drawn with Russia’s boycott of the sessions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in 2014–2016.

VI. Conclusion

The present analysis has shown that the 2026 Hague Declaration does not constitute an isolated political assessment. It should be regarded as part of an international process that has taken shape in the recent period around the assessment of Georgia’s democratic development. The documents adopted by the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, despite their differing institutional natures, rest to a significant extent on the same factual circumstances and, independently of one another, express similar assessments regarding the degradation of democratic institutions and electoral processes in Georgia.

One of the most important assertions of the Hague Declaration is its linking of the international recognition of elections to a positive assessment by authoritative international and domestic observation missions. As a result, in the absence of the requisite reforms, the recognition of elections held in Georgia—and, consequently, the legitimacy of the authorities themselves—becomes exceedingly problematic.

Finally, the significance of the Hague Declaration runs deeper than its political assessment. It reflects the convergence of the positions of international institutions towards Georgia and demonstrates that the assessment of the country’s democratic development increasingly rests on common criteria and a shared evaluative framework. In these circumstances, what matters for the Georgian authorities in order to preserve their legitimacy is not the harsh criticism of these assessments, but the creation of the conditions, and the implementation of the reforms, that will in future make it possible to lead the country out of international isolation. Otherwise, the critical assessments of international partners and Georgia’s growing political isolation will only deepen, with negative consequences not only for the country’s foreign-policy and security environment but also for its economic interests.

July 2026

[1]OSCE PA, The Hague Declaration and Resolutions, „Resolution on Upholding Election Integrity and Fundamental Freedoms in Georgia“, p. 75 (04–08.07.2026); Civil Georgia, „OSCE PA Resolution Calls on Georgia to Release ‘Political Prisoners’…“ (08.07.2026).

[2]Georgia Today, „Georgian delegation walks out of OSCE PA vote in protest over Hague declaration“, 08.07.2026, georgiatoday.ge.

[3]Pravda Georgia, „The Brussels bureaucracy is everywhere, but justice is nowhere“, 30.01.2025, ge.news-pravda.com — statement by Kakha Kaladze on the suspension of participation in PACE.

[4]European Parliament, Press Release 20260611IPR45217 (17.06.2026); PACE, Resolution 2664 (24.06.2026); OSCE PA, Hague Declaration (08.07.2026); OHCHR, HRC 62nd session statement (02.07.2026).

[5]Georgia Today, „European Parliament adopts Georgia report, calls for sanctions against Ivanishvili“ (17.06.2026); Civil Georgia (17.06.2026).

[6]PACE, Resolution 2664, „The functioning of democratic institutions in Georgia“ (24.06.2026); OC Media (25.06.2026).

[7]Civil Georgia, „UN Human Rights Council Hears Critical Report on Georgia“ (02.07.2026).

[8]OSCE/ODIHR, Report under the Moscow Mechanism invoked in respect of Georgia, 12.03.2026, odihr.osce.org (official document ODIHR.NV/82/2026).

[9]Publika.ge, „Nikoloz Samkharadze: the OSCE Moscow Mechanism report contains factual inaccuracies and accusations“, 05.07.2026.

[10]Kvira.ge, 07.07.2026, kvira.ge/1094820 — N. Samkharadze’s address at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

[11]OSCE/ODIHR, Report under the Moscow Mechanism (see note 8); Civil Georgia, „OSCE Moscow Mechanism Report Notes ‘Marked Democratic Backsliding,’ Issues Recommendations“, 12.03.2026, civil.ge/archives/724890.

[12]OC-Media, „OSCE issues damning report on Georgia’s democratic backsliding“, 13.03.2026, oc-media.org.

[13]Civil Georgia, civil.ge/archives/743948 (see note 1).

[14]OSCE PA, The Hague Declaration (see note 1); Civil Georgia, civil.ge/archives/743948.

[15]Civil Georgia, civil.ge/archives/743948.

[16]U.S. Congress, H.R. 36, MEGOBARI Act, 119th Congress, Section 6 (sanctions), congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/36.