24 countries have invoked the OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism on January 29 “to launch an expert mission on the deteriorating human rights situation in Georgia,” with a particular focus on developments since spring 2024.
The Moscow Mechanism, part of the OSCE’s human dimension framework, allows participating countries to establish an expert mission to investigate serious human rights violations in any member country. It is administered by the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). This marks the 17th invocation of the mechanism since its establishment in 1991.
The countries that backed invoking the mechanism include Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.
“We have followed closely and with increasing concern the human rights situation in Georgia,” Ambassador Anna Olsson Vrang, Permanent Representative of Sweden to the OSCE, said in a speech delivered in Vienna. The mechanism is meant “to establish a fact-finding mission to assess Georgia’s implementation of its OSCE commitments, with a particular focus on developments since spring 2024.”
The move follows the earlier invocation of the Vienna Mechanism – another OSCE “Human Dimension” tool to monitor the implementation of human rights and democracy commitments by member states – against Georgia by 38 states in December 2024. At the time, the countries invited Georgia to provide concrete and substantive responses to a number of human rights concerns amid ongoing pro-EU protests.
“Our concerns about implementation of shared human dimension commitments and international human rights obligations by the Georgian authorities have only increased,” the Swedish ambassador said.
Under the OSCE’s human-dimension mechanisms, Georgia has a set period, typically 10 days, to respond to the request about inviting an expert mission. If Georgia declines or does not formally invite the mission, a group of at least six OSCE participating States can instead appoint a mission of independent rapporteurs to visit Georgia and produce a report, without Tbilisi’s agreement on the composition of that group.
Should Georgia accept the fact-finding mission, it can participate in appointing one human rights expert from the pre-established roster.
“We acknowledge Georgia’s engagement with our delegations during 2025 and it is in a spirit of a constructive approach that our delegations have today written to the Director of ODIHR,” the statement reads. “We look forward to working with the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights on arrangements for the Mission.”
Since its establishment in 1991 until Georgia’s case, the Moscow mechanism has been invoked sixteen times, with the last ten of them directed at human rights concerns in Belarus and Russia, as well as human rights abuses against the Prisoners of War in the context of Russian aggression on Ukraine.
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