Making History in Georgia – ESFL’s Biggest Regional Conference Yet #TbilisiRC16

For the third time in a row, Georgian Students for Liberty has now organized an ESFL Regional Conference in Tbilisi, Georgia. Since 2014, the interest in this conference has grown among students who want to expand their knowledge of the ideas of liberty. This academic year, on October 22 2016, up to 500 open-minded students participated, making the Tbilisi Regional Conference the biggest ever, not only in the Caucasus region, but in all of Europe.

The conference took place at the third block of the National Parliamentary Library, which is a former office of the State Bank of Georgia. Recognized as a prominent architectural monument, it is one of the best among the modern style buildings that have survived in present-day Tbilisi.

We wanted to make the academic part of the conference as diverse as possible: The Tbilisi RC 2016 welcomed speakers from 7 different countries all around the world, who discussed topics such as privatization, surveillance, and regulations.

Lawrence Reed, a libertarian superstar and keynote speaker of the Tbilisi RC, gave one of the most memorable speeches, encouraging the audience to fight for liberty, “as it is the only social-economical arrangement, that allows people to be the unique individuals that they are.”

Another keynote speaker, Brian O’Shea, gave a remarkable speech about the importance of raising awareness of the surveillance problem not only from the perspective of Georgia, but all around the world: “In order to have liberty, you have to protect it. The best way to fight espionage is to learn how exactly spies work.”

Anastasia Bendukidze, daughter of Kakha Bendukidze (a famous Georgian libertarian statesman), presented a book – “Road to freedom”, which is a collection of dialogues with Mr. Bendukidze, who was in the center of Georgia’s libertarian revolution. She remembered her father as someone who created a certain generation of free people, who wouldn’t try to bribe someone to get a passport quicker, or give money to a policeman who had stopped them.

One of the many highlights of the conference was the grand opening of the #NoNanny hall. In cooperation with JTI (Japan Tobacco International, Georgia) we were able to demonstrate how regulations interference into our lives, affect our abilities to choose how we live, what we consume, eat and more.

The 22nd of October was one the many proofs, that Georgian students, who have been raised in a post soviet country, are eager to learn more about privatization, free market, human rights – everything their parents weren’t able to have in soviet times. It is crystal clear that the only option millennials in Georgia are considering for their future, is more freedom.

Ironically, the informal part of the conference, the #TbilisiRC16 social party, took place at Fabrika – a multifunctional urban space, which once was a soviet sewing factory.

The conference afterparty at the Fabrika venue.

You can find all photo’s of the Tbilisi Regional Conference here. For photo’s of the social, click here. For more events and information about Georgian Students for Liberty, visit GSFL’s Facebook page.