Mikheil Mirziashvili
Georgia, 1999
Director, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies
Mikheil (Misha) Mirziashvili is a 1999 graduate of the Human Rights Advocates Program. Misha is a founder and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. Since 2016, Misha has been the chairman of the board at the Center of Development and Democracy. His work is focused on the European Union’s Eastern Partnership countries. It includes monitoring the process of European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Georgia and providing information on this process to the interested stakeholders, such as students, youth activists, religious groups, ethnic minorities and IDPs, through workshops and public lectures. In 2013 Misha served as a member of the Steering Committe of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership Civil Socity Forum. He is an author of the Guidebook on EU-Georgia Association Agreement (2014) and a co-author of the report Implementation of EU-Georgia Association Agenda 2014-2016: Assessment by Civil Society (2017).
At the time of his arrival in HRAP, Mirziashvili had been working as the executive director of Association Studio Re, an independent television studio and NGO he had founded in 1992 to use the media to focus on human rights, conflict resolution, and peace-building in his home country. Through his participation in HRAP, Mirziashvili acquired many skills in advocacy and human rights tools that he has used since to advance a career supporting non-profit organizations for nearly two decades. He says that his time during HRAP “was the first such long, intensive, and diverse experience for me…I’m continuing to work in the non-profit sector, but the field of my work is widening (geographically and thematically), giving me the opportunity for self-actualization.”
HRAP brings together human rights advocates from around the world for a four-month training session at the campus of Columbia University in New York City. Explaining the benefits of his experience in HRAP, Mirziashvili states, “It helps with improving knowledge of human rights and with skills how to advocate. Participants come in contact with colleagues and partners and learn how to network.” The participants will gain these skills through coursework at Columbia University, training workshops on topics such as fundraising and networking, and attending meetings and presentations with foundations, NGOs, and financial institutions in New York City and Washington, D.C. relevant to the advocates’ personal work and profiles.
After leaving HRAP, Mirziashvili continued making a difference with Association Studio Re until moving on to become a program coordinator and then program manager of the Integration and Civic Education Program at the Open Society Institute Georgia Foundation in 2005. While serving there, he had been one of the persons responsible for the recommendations on Georgia's action plan for the European Neighborhood Policy. At the same time, he was involved in various activities aiming at conflict resolution in Abkhasia and South Osetia. He also coordinated a number of projects that addressed the problems of the integration of ethnic minorities into Georgian society. In addition, Mirziashvili was one of the initiators of the “South Caucasus Documentary Film Festival of Peace and Human Rights – Nationality: Human” during the festival’s startup years in 2006 to 2008.
Mirziashvili remarks that after leaving HRAP he was better suited for his work and the international career on which he embarked. He says, “In all my work since HRAP, I had favorable reception.” In 2009, he was appointed to the position of project manager of the Black Sea Peace-Building Project at Crisis Management Initiative, a Finnish independent NGO working to resolve conflict and build sustainable peace founded by Martti Ahtisaari, where he served until 2013. Out of his office in Brussels, Mirziashvili oversaw operations of the Black Sea Peace-Building Project operating in seven countries–Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. His projects provided support for self-ruling civil society expert councils for conflict resolution/transformation and peace initiatives. Misha continues to work in the same international and regional contexts as a civil society leader, a contributor and an evaluator of the European and Euro-Atlantic integration processes in the Eastern European countries.
- Article composed by Andrew Richardson, Program Assistant, July 2010; updated by Chiora Taktakishvili, Fulbright Exchange Visitor, June 2019
