Eka Tkeshelashvili: “Political Will Does Not Arise on Its Own — It Is Shaped”

There were several factors, and they were connected – to Georgia and to Ukraine at the same time. When freedoms began eroding in Georgia and the persecution of former government representatives started, I realized there was very little I could contribute to my own country’s development.

What pulled me toward Ukraine was what happened after 2014. Crimea, and then everything that followed, felt like a very bad déjà vu – but magnified. Our war in 2008, replayed at a completely different scale. Ukraine, which was always close to us Georgians and to me personally, had become a new frontier.
Maintaining Ukraine’s independence and its claim to being a successful European country became the fight we could actually contribute to. And by helping Ukraine, we were also helping Georgia – because Ukraine’s success is what keeps hope for Georgia’s success alive. If Ukraine fails, it’s our failure too.

And I never questioned why anti-corruption specifically – I knew from Georgia how much that transformation meant for economic development, for resilience when facing external threats.

I was perhaps an unusual head for a project like that – not a typical international development manager used to looking at reform from the outside. I had been for too long myself on the recipient side of assistance, managing it from different ministerial positions with one clear question: how do I use every resource as efficiently as possible to get results that are impact-oriented, fast, and resilient to future backsliding?

Even in anti-corruption – a difficult field for those in the power centers – you always find actors who want change and can be champions of it. The mindset was to understand what was needed at that particular moment, in a prioritized way, and what would deliver in the short term combined with the long term. If you don't deliver something tangible in the short term, you lose momentum – and with it, the window to do something bigger and more complicated.

The most important thing to understand is that the political class is never a monolithic organism. Different ministries have different agendas, different personalities, different calculations. Ukraine after Yanukovych is genuinely diverse in that regard.

There were always actors who sincerely wanted change. Others were not ideologically committed but understood that supporting reform was pragmatically a win for them – it kept them relevant, gave them political capital. And yes, there were retrograde forces too, working against. The task is to understand the whole spectrum: identify the champions, understand how they can be part of a collaborative effort where good results are a win-win for everyone, and then build a coalition broad enough to push through what no single actor could do alone.
That’s exactly what happened with the High Anti-Corruption Court – back and forth, back and forth, but ultimately it came through.

Ukraine has never been, and will never be, a country where you cannot find actors willing to fight for the right cause.

Political will is something that is shaped over time – it's almost never simply given. Sometimes it's very strong, coming from the top, and drives implementation right away. But more often it's fragmented. And the same goes for the will to obstruct: sometimes it's very strong, sometimes it's mild – and that's a different negotiating platform.

What I don’t like is when people use political will as a mythical category – either to justify all failures (“there was no political will”) or to explain all success (“there was political will”). The right question is always: why did this will emerge, or fail to emerge? What shaped it? If you reflect on that, you understand better how to shape it in the future.

Civil society and media are important tools for shaping political will, but not the only ones. If you only push from outside, you can create a defensive posture in the political class. You need to work on both sides simultaneously – showing those inside government what they gain, not just what they lose.

One of the factors – and on some issues, at critical moments, perhaps the most important. But you cannot pressure a sovereign country indefinitely, because then the country never develops. You need to prioritize the pressure points, so that you don't waste political capital.

The High Anti-Corruption Court is the clearest example. When the process kept stalling – back and forth on how judges would be selected, whether the court would be genuinely independent – it was a web of pressure points at that critical moment, including making the court's creation a conditionality of the IMF, that proved decisive. Without that pressure at that particular moment, I don’t believe the court would have been established as it was.
But the court was not created because of that pressure alone. A lot had been done before – raising awareness, civil society engagement, actors from parliament and different ministries being part of the process, NABU and SAPO already having credibility. If there had been no credible investigations and prosecutions, nobody would have fought as hard for the court.

And there’s also the other side of this. It's wrong to assume that something can only be achieved through international pressure – because that gives local actors an excuse: you only need to lobby international organizations to pressure your own government. That's a very partial role for civil society. The biggest value any civil society has is its connection to actual voters – the communities that ultimately make political decisions. Without that link, you become a loud actor whose existence depends entirely on external funding.

A combination of factors. But I still believe that for some key positions, international expert involvement – with the same architecture of a decisive role – remains beneficial for Ukraine for some time to come. It creates space for higher chances of independence in the selection. And with that, better quality and integrity of candidates.

When the country goes through a war of this magnitude and then, hopefully soon, returns to a peaceful situation with elections and reconstruction, there will be enormous political activity. Maintaining 100% independence of anti-corruption bodies – NABU, SAPO, HACC – so that none of them becomes a tool for selective justice or political cases, will be extremely important. Having international experts as part of the upcoming selections diffuses tension and opens space for constructive and independent process,
Even if Ukrainian commission members act independently, disappointed actors can always claim bias or political connections. International experts reduce that risk because they stand outside the Ukrainian political context – and at moments of high political tension, that matters.

What also made the HACC work was what happened after the selection. From day one, the court received coordinated institutional and donor. One common mistake is to think that selecting good judges is enough. In reality, a strong selection can fail without equally strong institutional support afterward.

You’re right that there’s a real challenge. But that distance also has advantages: international experts are often more cautious, more procedural, and more focused on standards that can withstand legal challenge, including before the ECHR.

What we worked hard to achieve – and it was a genuine breakthrough – was shifting the standard for integrity assessment from ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ to ‘reasonable doubt.’ The logic is different: in a criminal case you must prove guilt, while in an integrity assessment, substantiated doubt may be enough to disqualify a candidate. We had to argue this case with donors, with embassies, with the Venice Commission. It took time. But it was accepted and settled as a rule applied in other countries as well.

International expertise gives you the reassurance that when a genuinely contested candidate comes up – someone with real integrity problems or political connectivity – you have unbiased and highly professional people with no stake in Ukrainian politics who can call it clearly. That’s the value worth preserving for a while.

Possibly. And there’s no requirement that international donors nominate only international experts – it can be national experts too. The key question is how to design commissions in a way that ensures both real independence and public trust in that independence.

Let me answer from my own example. I have no political stake in Georgian politics right now. But I have my own views on different actors – people I’ve watched over the years of backsliding of Georgia’s democracy after 2012. There are people I would not trust with senior positions – not necessarily because they acted illegally, but because they either contributed to or have condoned state capture of Georgia by the Georgian Dream regime, and with that radical U-turn from Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic trajectory. If I were sitting on a selection commission, those biases would be there. I’d try to be honest and professional – but it would be very hard to fully eradicate what years of experience have accumulated. No human being can stay completely objective in the political context of their own country at a time when stakes are too high.

A mixed commission – Georgian and non-Georgian experts – would contain those biases better while still preserving deep understanding of the local context.
That said, I don’t see this as a permanent requirement. At some point, when Ukrainian politics normalizes – after the war, after at least one, ideally two rounds of elections, when the political landscape is no longer in a post-war state – the case for international involvement becomes much weaker. The key is not to exit prematurely for reasons of budget convenience, and not to maintain it forever as a condition imposed from outside rather than a shared understanding with Ukrainian actors.

It is important to mention that, in Ukraine, civil society actively wanted international involvement – it was not something imposed from the international side. If Ukraine’s actors – civil society, anti-corruption bodies, the state – come to a clear consensus that they no longer need it, there is no basis for the international community to insist

Georgia is a captured state now, dominated by a single oligarch connected to Russia. The institutions built during the reform years sustained an illusion of normalcy for some time. But when you have political capture like that, it erodes everything over time.

So now we have a judicial system that is, for good reasons, completely distrusted – and not just the judiciary, but law enforcement and security forces as well. When change comes – through elections or however it comes – a complete systemic overhaul of public administration will be unavoidable. Not firing everyone, but a genuinely systemic transformation. The challenge is doing it without disrupting the delivery of public services. When functioning institutions have become instruments of a captured regime – which is often harder to reform than building institutions from scratch.
I’m watching Hungary closely. How an EU member state attempts to reform politically captured institutions while remaining within European legal constraints will be extremely important for countries like Georgia.

And yes, international involvement in Georgia's transformation would help consolidate support rather than fragment it. Without it, every decision can be framed as revenge by the new government against the old. With international involvement this narrative becomes much harder to sustain.

We do reflect on these issues seriously and usually together with partners. In the HACC process, for example, we regularly discussed not only technical expertise, but also what kinds of people and skills actually make commissions function effectively.

For implementing project staff, accountability is very direct: if something goes seriously wrong, it can affect your position or employment. For donors, accountability works differently. Even when reforms do not deliver the expected results, donors can usually point to the fact that they provided funding, technical expertise, political backing, and support throughout the process. Because institutional reform depends on many local political and institutional factors, it is often difficult to clearly attribute failure to any single actor. As a result, donors generally face less direct accountability for outcomes than the local institutions or project teams implementing the reforms. In practice, however, the primary responsibility still rests with local actors, because they are expected to lead the process, define priorities, and ensure that external assistance is properly focused, coordinated, and effectively used.

One principle I feel strongly about is that the selection process should never be separated from the institutional support that follows it. If you invest heavily in creating a strong and credible selection process, but then fail to provide the new institution with adequate infrastructure, staffing, operational support, and sustained follow-through, much of that investment is wasted.

In the judiciary, I don’t believe much in pure evolution.

You have to be radical about the right things – the centers of gravity. Ukraine's mistake, in my view, was starting with the Supreme Court without a parallel process of reforming at least selected first instance and appellate courts as well. Until a case reaches it, everything happens in the lower courts. If the system doesn't change from below, you cannot count on the Supreme Court to change system miracolousely through its decisions. Judicial reform shall be a web of parallel processes. And the judicial governing bodies are the most important centers of gravity – they set the tone for the whole system.

In Georgia, we did not simply dismiss judges en masse. We redesigned the judicial architecture itself. We replaced the post-Soviet court structure with a more specialized system aligned with European standards, introduced clearer institutional and procedural frameworks, and reformed the judicial governing bodies. Judges had to apply to the new courts through a rehiring process in which integrity was a central criterion, alongside professional qualifications and the ability to function within the reformed system.

Unlike police reform, judicial reform moves at a different pace. Legal expertise, judicial culture, and professional capacity take years to develop, which creates natural limits on how quickly change can occur. But that makes structural redesign even more important, particularly at the level of appeals courts and judicial governing bodies, because these institutions shape how the entire system functions and set the standards that influence the judiciary as a whole.

What went wrong in Georgia over time — and this is important to acknowledge — was that the prosecution became institutionally much stronger while the defense side lagged behind. Both the state and donors invested heavily in strengthening the prosecution: resources, training, institutional capacity, investigative tools, and professional development. There was no comparable investment in strengthening the bar association or improving the quality and capacity of defense attorneys.
If I could go back, I would place far greater emphasis on strengthening the defense side of the system, including the bar association and the overall quality of legal defense.And I would push for more forceful reform of legal education – double down on ethics from the first day. In the US, when you study law, the understanding that a single ethical violation can end your entire career is imprinted in you from day one. It becomes part of your professional DNA. Legal education and professional ethics matter enormously. Institutional reform alone is not enough without an independent and ethical legal profession. I strongly believe in that.

The standards themselves are the destination, not the roadmap. Judicial independence is the standard; lifetime appointment is only one possible mechanism for protecting it. One of the recurring mistakes international actors make is treating a particular institutional arrangement as if it were the standard itself, rather than one possible path toward achieving it.

In periods of deep institutional transformation, I am cautious about immediate lifetime appointments for judges. At that stage, institutional culture is still evolving, and it is impossible to fully know how individuals or institutions will function under the new framework. If irrevocable guarantees are introduced too early, countries may lock in structural problems for decades.
A more prudent approach is to begin with tenure-based appointments and move gradually toward stronger guarantees as the system matures. What matters is not copying a ready-made model, but building safeguards that actually work in the political and institutional reality of a given country.

During transition periods, strong protections for judicial independence still remain essential: credible judicial governance, fair oversight mechanisms, transparent procedures, institutional security, and, where necessary, international participation. There is nothing illegitimate about designing transitional systems differently from long-established democracies.

Countries undergoing profound transformation do not have the luxury of relying on off-the-shelf institutional models. Effective reform has to reflect political realities, institutional weaknesses, and reform objectives specific to that society.
In times of deep transformation, I don't think we have the luxury of off-the-shelf solutions. Tailor-made is always better – because it's made for your specific construction.

From the very beginning, I was involved in efforts to advance the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression through the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, where I serve on the Board of Trustees. Early on, we joined forces with former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who became one of the key political figures behind the initiative. Using our networks, we helped build an initial coalition of supporters — mainly from Eastern Europe, the Nordic countries, and the United Kingdom. At the time, very few people believed such a tribunal could actually become reality.

But projects like this always begin with a small group of people willing to push an idea others consider impossible. And where we are today — with institutional structures, evidence-gathering mechanisms, and growing international participation — is already far beyond what most expected at the beginning.
There has always been a clear jurisdictional gap regarding the crime of aggression. Without a Special Tribunal, Russia would likely avoid accountability for that crime entirely. Even if Putin himself is never physically brought before a court, establishing legal responsibility still matters. It strengthens the basis for reparations, the use of frozen Russian assets, and creates a historical and legal record that cannot easily be erased.

The question of genocide belongs within the ICC framework, and Ukraine together with partner states continues to work in that direction.

I strongly believe that accountability matters not only for Ukraine, but for the future of the international legal order itself. The principles established after Nuremberg helped sustain a degree of global stability for decades. Today, that order is clearly under strain, and reaffirming accountability for crimes of this magnitude matters far beyond this war alone.

And I think it is important to remain driven by optimism, because optimism is what mobilizes action. The tribunal itself began with only a handful of people who believed the idea was possible. Few believed the Soviet Union would collapse. Many still doubt that Russia can lose this war. I believe Russia will lose this war. The real question is not whether that outcome is possible, but what work is being done to help bring it about.