Education: Sociology MA degree, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. Certificate on PhD Admissions, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. Fellow, Democracy and Development Programme Stanford University, Centre of Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law – CDDRL, California, US. A fully accredited BRIDGE (Building Recourses in Democracy, Governance and Elections) Workshop Facilitator – internationally recognized training organization.
Position: Chairperson of the Central Election Commission of Georgia.
Work Topics: Electoral systems, electoral law, democracy and governance, political rights, women’s political participation.
Languages: Georgian – native, English – fluent, Russian – fluent.
City: Tbilisi
E-mail: tzhvania(at)cec.gov.ge
Biography:
Tamar Zhvania is the Chairperson of the Central Election Commission of Georgia since 2013. Before joining Georgia’s public service, Ms. Zhvania worked as a program manager at United Nations Development Program (UNDP Georgia). At UNDP, she designed and implemented election assistance programs aimed at raising public awareness, promoted institutional strengthening of electoral institutions, and contributed to improved electoral legal framework. Ms. Zhvania was an executive director of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), Georgia’s leading election watchdog organization. In 2011-2012 she was Senior Program Manager of National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Nigeria. Tamar Zhvania participated in various international observation missions – she observed the Parliamentary Elections of Bangladesh in 2007 as a long term observer consultant of NDI, as for the Parliamentary Elections of Kazakhstan in 2005, she represented OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) as an observer; Ms. Zhvania also observed Parliamentary Elections of Norway in 2005 under the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. Tamar Zhvania attended Presidential Elections in Ukraine, as an observer of European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO). In Latvia Ms. Zhvania observed Parliamentary Elections as an EMB observer and in USA she attended elections under IFES US Election Program.
Tamar Zhvania is an author of a number of publications. Within the framework of the observation mission of “International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy” (ISFED) Ms. Zhvania prepared monitoring reports for the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections 2004. Tamar Zhvania prepared election reports for the By-elections and Repeat Elections of the Parliament of Georgia in 2005 and report on Municipal Elections in 2006. Ms. Zhvania is the co-author of the reports of ISFED on Local Self-Governmental and Parliamentary Elections in 2002. Tamar Zhvania is also the author of a number of articles and information brochures on the issues related to election management, accessibility, publicity of information, in addition Ms. Zhvania was an editor of the ISFED newspaper “Civil Society” (7 editions) and the magazine with the same title (3 editions) and the author of the various publications published in the same newspaper.