Across the globe, “foreign agent” laws have proliferated—mostly not as genuine tools of transparency, but as instruments to control and suppress civil society. Using Georgia—where lawmakers adopted a near-verbatim translation of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)—as its central case study, this talk traces FARA’s origins and purpose and examines how its legacy has been invoked, and often misused, by governments engaged in abusive legal borrowing. Finally, the session will highlight why, even under well-intentioned governments, statutory controls cannot by themselves resolve the complex challenges posed by foreign influence. 

Sophio Asatiani (LL.M.) is a human rights lawyer and member of the Georgian Bar Association (criminal law section) from Tbilisi, Georgia. She is currently a Legal Officer at the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in Warsaw, where she drafts legal opinions and advises on democratic lawmaking and human rights compliance. Previously, she spent more than a decade advancing justice reforms and civic freedoms in Georgia through senior roles with leading civil society organizations and by teaching human rights law at several universities, including Ilia State University.