Dear Sirs,
My name is Liana Kvarchelia and I am a civil society activist in Abkhazia. I am following the Freedom House reports on Abkhazia and appreciate that in general your reports capture the key issues in the region. However there are certain inaccuracies, which I think are quite important and need to be addressed. I will touch upon only one of them. The report of 2011 says that NGOs in Abkhazia are not permitted to monitor elections. This is not true. I am a member of the League of Voters for Fair Elections in Abkhazia. We have monitored presidential elections since 2004. Since last year a special amendment has been adopted by the Parliament that officially allows NGOs to monitor elections. This has been the result of lobbying on the part of NGOs. Prior to that we monitored elections without any provisions in the legislation and had no problems with reagrd to access either to polling station and local election committees, or to the Central election committee.
If you need further information on the issue, I will be happy to provide it or send you the contacts of my colleagues from the NGO community - members of the League.
Sincerely yours,
Liana Kvarchelia
Liana Kvarchelia Centre for Humanitarian Programmes
Sukhum, Republic of Abkhazia
e-mail: lkvarchelia@yahoo.com
