Natia’s Journey with PFP
Human Rights Defender & Activist
Natia Gamkhitashvili is a former strategic litigation lawyer at Sapari, which is a Tbilisi-based women’s rights organization.
Within the framework of PFP 2022-2023, she was hosted by Southern California Immigration Project (SCIP) in San Diego, California. In this blog, Natia shares her experience - what she took away from the program and how it helped her grow personally and professionally. Natia was actively involved in volunteering activities in San Diego.
Natia shares with us that SCIP is a public interest non-profit organization dedicated to providing pro bono legal services to survivors of human and civil rights violations.
Her work there entailed drafting various legal documents, responding to calls, and meeting with/interviewing asylum seekers from Africa who had been persecuted by Al-Shabab, majority clans, society/religious leaders on the grounds of gender/gender identity/sexual orientation, etc.
During the fellowship, she had an extraordinary opportunity to visit detention facilities and shadow her host attorneys at immigration courts.
Upon completing the fellowship, Natia was selected to participate in the European Parliament Sakharov Fellowship Program 2023 which is an empowering program for human rights defenders. The fellowship included training in the European Parliament (Brussels) and at the Global Campus of Human Rights (Venice). Natia shares with us her experience:
The Brussels part focused on issues that are relevant for human rights defenders, namely EU policies and tools supporting human rights defenders, security challenges, communication skills, etc. This part also entailed meetings, both joint and individual, with numerous representatives of various EU entities and other stakeholders. During individual meetings, Natia had the opportunity to discuss Georgia’s prospect of receiving the candidate status with the EU officials who are engaged in this process.
“As a member of Georgian civil society and youth, I devoted my meetings in the European Parliament primarily to advocacy, to conveying our genuine aspiration, that is Georgia’s integration into the EU, and to soliciting the EU’s continuing support.”
Natia shares that the Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice is comprised of academic teaching on various international human rights law issues, instruments, and mechanisms by prominent experts in the field, as well as sessions on practical tools necessary for human rights defenders.
Natia decided to pivot her career and as she is interested in exploring EU-Georgia relations, she is very much eager to welcome new opportunities to work on this topic as well as on the Twelve Priorities that the EU has imposed on Georgia to be able to obtain the EU candidacy status.
