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Conversation Changers: Georgia’s Fight for Disability Rights
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Conversation Changers, Salzburg Global's podcast, brings together thought leaders, artists, policymakers, and change-makers from around the globe to reframe dialogue, explore new ideas, and imagine better futures.
In this episode of Conversation Changers, we’re continuing our conversation on disability rights, but this time shifting the focus to the South Caucasus. Georgia, a post-Soviet candidate for European Union membership, finds itself navigating a critical transitional period. While European integration promises social reforms, growing democratic backsliding, authoritarian legislation, and a lingering Soviet mindset continue to leave disabled Georgians excluded from civic, economic, and daily life.
Joining the conversation from Tbilisi, Salzburg Global Fellow Esma Gumberidze explores the frontlines of grassroots activism in Georgia. As a blind activist and legal scholar, Esma details how structural barriers, from inaccessible court systems and public infrastructure to retaliatory fines and anti-protest measures, are actively used to disenfranchise vulnerable populations and strip disabled citizens of their political agency.
From the medicalized approach to disability status to the criminalization of civil assembly, this episode provides a candid look at the brave fight for accessibility, representation, and basic human rights at the intersection of a nation’s democratic future.
Highlights From This Episode
- Soviet Legacy vs. EU Integration: How Georgia’s archaic medical model of disability status frustrates the adoption of a human rights-based approach aligned with UN standards.
- Democratic Backsliding and Civil Disobedience: The chilling effect of "foreign agent" laws and aggressive fines on disabled activists exercising their right to protest.
- Systemic Inaccessibility as Exclusion: The physical and digital barriers—from unadapted courts to step-only government buildings—that exclude disabled citizens from legal representation and civic life.
- Weaponizing Stigma: How state propaganda and law enforcement exploit disability diagnoses to undermine individual agency and discredit democratic movements.
- The Intersection of Disability and Gender: How the removal of mandatory parliamentary quotas further marginalizes disabled women from public decision-making.
- Reframing the Narrative: Gumberidze’s call for society to stop infantilizing disabled people and instead recognize them as essential drivers of political and social change.
Continue the Conversation
Click here to subscribe to Conversation Changers on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media using #ConversationChangers and tag @SalzburgGlobal.
Follow Esma Gumberidze to find out more about her work with civil society initiatives in Georgia: LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube
Follow Eric Olander on LinkedIn here
