On May 31 and June 1, 2017, the Council of Europe DirectorateGeneralHuman Rights and Rule of Law organized a working meeting in Strasbourg, France, which was attended by representatives of the national preventive mechanisms along with high-level experts. The aim of the meeting was to enable the group working on the standards of administrative detention of migrants to listen to the comments and remarks of the national preventive mechanisms. Georgia was represented at the meeting by Nika Kvaratskhelia, Head of the Department of Prevention and Monitoring of the Public Defender's Office.

It was discussed at the meeting how adequately the regulatory standards of administrative detention of migrants were codified. Representatives of the national preventive mechanisms welcomed the efforts in terms of coding the migrants' detention standards and noted that the draft document on the standards should be significantly improved. An opinion was expressed that the document is under the influence of the European prison rules, which is not reasonable, as migrants’ status is different from the prisoners’ status and therefore, it should be avoided to place them in the prison-like conditions.

At the same time, it is necessary the guaranteed remedies included in the document to be applied to any stage of detention of migrants and not be limited to only migrant placement centers. Representatives of the national preventive mechanisms expect that their comments will be reflected in the final version of the document.