January 28, BEC hosted an expert meeting on “How to implement a national strategy on the occupied territories in terms of legal bearings”.

The participants presented specific initiatives on legal issues such as taxation, property registration, trading and movement of people around the occupied territories. It was agreed that legislative elaboration of the initiatives would lay the basis for implementation of the strategy.

Organizational issues of the conference were discussed as well. It was decided to hold the conference “The Dialogue between the Government of Georgia and Civil Society on Settling differences with the Abkhaz and the Ossetian” during the first week of March. The key issue of the conference is to discuss the ways of implementation of the national strategy. It was noted that the presented reports would be preliminarily debated by the Advisory Board to elaborate a final draft.

The participants agreed that the legislative initiatives would be further elaborated and presented at the conference to be debated with the government with purpose of contributing to implementation of the national strategy.