A group of about twenty civil society organizations requested lawmakers to hold a parliamentary hearing over the ruling of the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) into the complaint brought by Georgia against Russia.

Having upheld one of the Russian Federation’s preliminary objections, ICJ ruled on April 1, that Georgia’s case against Russia “can not proceed to the merit phase.” In its complaint filed on August 12, 2008, Georgia claimed that Russia violated its obligations under the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) during three distinct phases of its interventions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the period from 1990 to August 2008.

In an appeal sent to the Parliament on April 27, the group of civil society organizations says that public hearings would be an opportunity for the society to better understand and assess the outcome of the case. The group also requested the Parliament to summon at the hearing those Georgia government officials, who were in charge of representing Georgian interests in the ICJ proceedings.

The signatories of the appeal, among others, are Georgian Young Lawyers Association; Human Rights Priority; Public Constitutional Commission; Transparency International Georgia; Former Political Prisoners for Human Rights; International Center on Conflict and Negotiation; Georgian Institute for Russian Studies.