The pandemics caused by the new coronavirus has been a major challenge for the whole world. Countries had to tighten public health and safety rules and take various non-standard measures in an emergency situation, which led to significant restrictions used on people’s daily lives. Against this background, the risks of human rights violations have naturally increased.
The new coronavirus was a novelty for Georgia too, where appropriate measures were taken to protect public health, including the creation of non-traditional places for limitation of freedom such as quarantine areas. Since, when a person is placed in a quarantine space, s/he is under the effective control of the state authorities and since this constitutes the restriction of liberty, in the period of March-May 2020, a special prevention group monitored the quarantine spaces.
Despite the pandemics, throughout the year the Special Prevention Group, in compliance with all security measures, actively continued the ad hoc monitoring of closed facilities. In 2020, 141 visits were carried out to 109 facilities of restriction/deprivation of liberty. The purpose of the visits was to assess the measures taken to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) in places of restriction and deprivation of liberty and the impact of these measures on the rights of persons placed there, their necessity and proportionality, as well as collecting information on working conditions of the staff.