On 6 February, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia announced the launch of a new stage in the country’s long-term human rights strategy, reported agenda.ge. 

He said that the creation of a human rights strategy was initiated by former PM and current chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili back in 2013 and that the strategy has been taken into account while carrying out all democratic reforms in the country since that time. 

Gakharia said that the Georgian government will use “all possible platforms inside and outside the country” to successfully complete the new stage of the strategy this year.  He stated that fast economic growth, creation of jobs, education reform, security field and open governance are among the top priorities of the government.  “All of these directions were discussed in detail at the Donor Coordination Conference and we got the full support of our international partners towards reforms to be implemented in these areas,” he said.

Georgia’s previous human rights strategy was drafted for the period 2014-2020. It focused on achieving the following goals in particular: 1) coherence of the legislative/institutional frameworks with the development strategy, as well as any requirements stipulated in the Action Plan; 2) conduction of wide-spread public awareness-raising campaigns on human rights and the means by which to realize these rights in practice; and 3) regular rendering of the positive and negative duties owed by all government representatives and public organs with respect to human rights. The strategy aimed towards establishing an ‘institutional democracy’ within the state and to apply a ‘human rights-based approach’ in the formulation, implementation, monitoring and assessment of its various policies and programs.

According to the recent report of Human Rights Watch, Georgia’s main human rights challenges were in the fields of accountability for police and security officers, unjustifiably harsh drug laws, labor protection and labor rights, discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people (LGBT), and threats to media pluralism (Caucasus Watch reported).