After several days of mass protests and clashes between protesters and police in early March, the ruling party of Georgia, a former Soviet state located in the Caucasus, succumbed to pressure and abandoned its proposed laws on foreign agents.
But the uproar and media focus surrounding the Georgian initiative and its demise should not mask a greater trend when it comes to such laws, which target foreign-funded media and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. Over the past decade they have sprung up in countries across the world. China, India, Cambodia, Australia and Uganda are among the dozens of countries that have “foreign agent” laws on their books.
