More than 1.5 million Georgian citizens live abroad, said Vladimer Konstantinidi, Deputy Foreign Minister today, March 6, at the meeting of the Committee on Diaspora and Caucasus Issues of the Georgian Dream Parliament. As of January 1, 2024 Georgia’s population according to the official statistical data was 3.7 mln.
According to him, the figure is “unofficial”. He said that many Georgians live illegally in foreign countries, so the statistics may not be accurate. The Ministry’s information, he said, is based on data received from embassies and the diaspora and therefore may not be accurate.
He also presented a list of foreign countries where most Georgians live:
- Russia – 700,000
- Greece – 200,000
- U.S. – 120,000
- Italy – 50,000
- Germany – 50,000
- Turkey – 45,000
- France – 35,000
- Spain – 25,000
- Belgium – 20,000
- Israel – 20,000
- U.K – 10,000
According to the 2020 general census of Russia, there were 113,687 people who identified as ethnic Georgians living in the Russian Federation, of whom 3,045 held Georgian citizenship.
The diaspora issue was at the center of the October 26 parliamentary elections. In the months leading up to the vote, opposition parties and President Salome Zurabishvili have repeatedly urged the Central Election Commission (CEC) to open more polling stations abroad, to allow emigrants opportunities to take part in the polls. The calls went unanswered.
The CEC had opened only 60 polling precincts in 42 countries, resulting in long lines of Georgians waiting for hours to vote in some large cities such as Berlin or New York. Many were unable to vote.
The vast majority of emigrants who were able to vote voted for the opposition parties, with official results from the CEC showing that Georgian Dream garnered mere 13.5 % of the emigrant vote, giving the opposition a landslide victory abroad. But the turnout could have been higher if polling stations had been closer to their home towns, so that they did not have to travel hundreds of kilometers to vote.
After the elections, President Salome Zurabishvili appealed to the Constitutional Court, citing violations of ballot secrecy and universal suffrage, the latter due to the state’s failure to streamline voting rights for emigrants. The Constitutional Court rejected the appeal.
0 Comment