Georgia

National context

Georgia sits at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and has long served as a bridge between civilizations, religions, and cultures. Its religious composition reflects that position. According to the 2014 census, members of the Georgian Orthodox Church make up 83.4 percent of the population and Muslims 10.7 percent, followed by the Armenian Apostolic Church at 2.9 percent; the remainder includes Catholic, Yezidi, Greek Orthodox, and Jewish communities alongside a growing number of groups that Georgian law describes as “nontraditional.”

The constitution provides for freedom of belief, prohibits religious persecution, and guarantees equality regardless of religion. It also recognizes the Georgian Orthodox Church’s “outstanding role” in the country’s history, and relations between the Church and the state are governed by a constitutional agreement — a concordat granting the Church rights not extended to other religious communities, including a consultative role in government, especially on matters of state education.

Registration is open to any religious group through the National Agency of the Public Registry, either as a legal entity under public law or as a noncommercial entity, and unregistered communities may still conduct religious activity. Registration as a legal entity under public law, however, requires either a historic link to Georgia or recognition as a religion in the legislation of a Council of Europe member state — a threshold that can present challenges for newer religious communities seeking public-law status.

Several aspects of this framework remain unsettled. Tax exemptions and the restitution of property confiscated during the Soviet period still lack clear legislative footing, and the State Agency for Religious Issues has itself favored drafting a broader law on religion to establish which communities qualify for which benefits. Disputes over places of worship continue to reach the courts, and civil society organizations document incidents of religiously motivated harassment each year.

Georgia carries this alongside pressures familiar across the region: political polarization, the legacy of Russian invasion and the territories that remain under Russian occupation, and the ordinary difficulty of building trust across religious difference in a society where one church is both the overwhelming majority and constitutionally distinguished. These characteristics make Georgia an important context for the Eurasia Panel’s work. They also make it a useful setting for examining how practical approaches to religious freedom, social cohesion, and responsible citizenship can be adapted across societies that share elements of the post-Soviet experience.

The Panel’s focus in Georgia

Georgia is one of the Panel’s founding partners. The relationship developed through invitation and partnership rather than assessment, reflecting Georgia’s early interest in institutional collaboration on religious freedom and Cross-Cultural Religious Literacy. Unlike Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it has not yet undergone an independent Religious Freedom Assessment. Instead, the Panel’s understanding has developed through sustained engagement with the State Agency for Religious Issues, religious leaders, universities, civil society organizations, and international partners, beginning with the 2023 Conference on Religion and the Rule of Law in Tbilisi and the 2024 Batumi conference on the role of religious education in addressing contemporary challenges. In 2025 that cooperation was formalized: a five-year memorandum of understanding between the State Agency for Religious Issues, LYNC, and the IRF Secretariat, covering religious freedom, cross-cultural religious literacy, and regional dialogue.

That history shapes how the three phases of the Panel’s cycle stand in Georgia.

Engage. The Panel’s convening work runs through institutions that already have standing in Georgian public life — the State Agency for Religious Issues, Tbilisi State University, and other national partners — rather than around them. The aim is cooperation between public institutions and religious communities that persists between conferences, while strengthening Georgia’s role as a regional platform for dialogue through the Eurasia Panel and the IRF Roundtable.

Equip. Cross-Cultural Religious Literacy (CCRL) is being established as a practical framework for advancing religious freedom, strengthening social cohesion, and preventing radicalization. Current priorities are professional education programs and academic partnerships that give the training an institutional home, so that capacity outlasts any particular project.

Research. Unlike Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where independent assessments established the Panel’s initial evidence base, Georgia’s research agenda is only now beginning to take institutional form. Future independent assessment and empirical study are intended to complement the relationships and educational partnerships that have already been established, creating a stronger evidence base for long-term engagement.

One initiative under development seeks to address exactly that gap. Developed with Tbilisi State University, the State Agency for Religious Issues, and other Georgian partners, a proposed Cross-Cultural Religious Literacy program for women educators would examine how intellectual humility, empathy, perspective-taking, and cooperation across disagreement can be cultivated through CCRL training while generating empirical evidence using validated research instruments. If implemented, the project would produce a refined curriculum, Georgian-adapted measurement tools, and an evidence base capable of informing teacher education while providing the foundation for the Panel’s future Research phase and long-term measurement of outcomes.