On November 25, 2014, the Public Defender of Georgia approved a document defining policies of prevention of sexual harassment. Taking into consideration importance in-practice application of discrimination prohibiting norms stipulated in national and international legislation, the Public Defender’s Office assumed responsibility to create safe and free from asexual harassment environment for its workers. In order to achieve this objective special attention is paid to conduction of preventive measures.

The objective outlined in the prevention document - to eliminate a precedent of sexual harassment at a workplace – is achieved through fulfilling the following tasks:

Employees of the Public Defender’s Office to receive information on their rights and obligations regarding sexual harassment; also, to arrange special training for them on the mentioned issue;

To create alternative environment to sexual harassment by implementing adequate response mechanisms;

A sexual harassment claim to be followed by investigation of the fact and effective steps for its legal solution;

The body responsible for compliance with implementation of the policy document is the Department of Human Resources of the Public Defender’s Office that receives and considers such clams, also monitors application of the document in close cooperation with the Department of Gender Equality.

Sexual harassment at workplaces still remains a tabooed topic in Georgia that is not discussed. Though, the practice of the Public Defender shows that the number of such issues is very high. Victims of harassment do not talk about a problem. This is caused on one side, because of attitudes in the society and, on the other hand, because of faultiness/inflexibility of mechanisms since the Georgian legislations do not provided definition of sexual harassment. Especially important in this process is existence of internal regulatory mechanisms.

The Public Defender of Georgia in his Parliamentary report 2013 called on state authority bodies to start work on elaboration on definition of sexual harassment. After the signing of the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention) this process was started but it is yet to be finished. And, in this process vital importance is allotted to internal response mechanisms.

By this action the Public Defender of Georgia decided to support and emphasize the importance of prevention of sexual harassment at workplaces, to create environment free of sexual harassment for its employees and make his experience available for interested parties.

The Public Defender of Georgia calls on private and public enterprises to share experience of the Public Defender and by approving internal response mechanisms advance fight against sexual harassment at places of employment.