On June 2, 2017, Nika Kvaratskhelia, Head of the Department of Prevention and Monitoring of the Public Defender's Office, took part in the working meeting organized by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, which was attended by representatives of the executive authorities of various states, international organizations, national human rights institutions and non-governmental organizations.

The importance of national human rights action plans, advantages and disadvantages of the current plans, the practice of implementation and challenges in the mentioned field were discussed at the event held in Strasbourg, France.

The need for participation of stakeholders in the elaboration of the action plans, determination of the indicators of consideration of the reports of national human rights institutions and implementation of the action plans, as well as development of monitoring and evaluation systems, were emphasized at the working meeting. It was noted that special attention should be paid to the communication strategy and raising public awareness. In addition, it is preferably the national human rights action plans to reflect the UN sustainable development goals.

It should be noted that the development of the human rights strategy and action plan was one of the main recommendations of the Public Defender. It is welcome that on April 30, 2014, the Parliament approved the national human rights strategy for 2014-2020. After that, the Government approved the national human rights action plan for 2014-2015, and in 2016 a new action plan was approved for 2016-2017. The Public Defender considers that these documents should maximally cover all the challenges in terms of protection of human rights in the country and should define the ways for combating them. At the same time, the goals and tasks of these documents must be properly implemented.