On February 16, 2015, the Parliamentary Committee of Human Rights and Civil Integration discussed a situation regarding fulfillment of recommendations of the Public Defender of Georgia “on the Situation of the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms in Georgia for 2013”.

A report on fulfillment of recommendations of the Public Defender by the Office of the State Minster for Reconciliation and Civic Equality was presented by First Deputy State Minister Ketevan Tsikhelashvili.

In accordance with a recommendation of the Public Defender, the Office of the State Minister was tasked to supervise the issue of fully-pledged participation of ethnic minorities in political, cultural and public activities with the view of ensuring civil integration and protection of rights of ethnic minorities.

The Recommendation of the Public Defender can be considered partially fulfilled since last year numerous events have been held with immediate participation of the Office of the State Minister for Reconciliation and Civic Equality; the government strategy and action plan were elaborated where a significant place is allotted to the issue of integration of ethnic minorities, including access to education – improvement of school programmes, improvement of quality of translation of school textbooks, raising teachers’ qualifications.

Due to quotas established for school graduates 673 representatives of ethnic minorities who were interested in receiving high education managed to receive bachelor’s degree in 2014; qualification-raising of Georgian language teachers and financial encouragements aimed at motivation of young teachers are under way.

News programmes in five languages are weekly feature on the second channel of the Public Broadcaster; there is also a radio station in Kurdish language. The state funds Armenian-Language and Azeri language newspapers. It is planned to restore “Chveni ezo” programme of the second channel of the Public defender. Despite the conducted work, the Public Defender believes that the level of involvement in civil integration is quite low; the main challenge remaining is absence or lack of knowledge of an official language; representatives of ethnic minorities experience lack of information while because of inability to speak, Georgian representatives of ethnic minorities watch TV channels of other countries that operate in their native language. Also, at the centre stage, practically there is no involvement of ethnic minorities in political life.