On December 14, 2023, First Deputy Public Defender Tamar Gvaramadze participated in an event held under the auspices of the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - "Intergenerational Dialogue on Human Rights".

Representatives of younger and older generations, as well as other participants in the meeting, talked about ways to ensure inclusivity, necessary measures to deal with discrimination and violence against older persons, and policies and practices for dignified, healthy and active aging.

The First Deputy Public Defender of Georgia spoke about the importance of protecting the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of older people. She briefly reviewed the problems existing in the direction of protecting the rights of older persons, including the monitoring of long-term care institutions and the results of various cases studied by the Office. She noted that, unfortunately, age-based discrimination leads to the exclusion of older persons, since the enjoyment of basic rights decreases with age due to the negative perception that older persons are less productive in society and that they are a burden for younger generations.

Tamar Gvaramadze emphasized the solid guarantees provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international documents in the direction of protecting the dignity of all people, including older persons, and expressed hope that the Government would make more efforts to eliminate challenges, pay due attention to the issue and take concrete steps to protect the rights of older persons.

The participants in the event were addressed by Vladimir Shkolnikov, Senior Human Rights Adviserfor theSouth CaucasusOffice of theUN High CommissionerforHuman Rights(OHCHR), Nutsi Odisharia, Social Policy Officerat UNFPA Georgia, Evija Kotan,Deputy Headof Political,PressandInformationSection of the EU DelegationtoGeorgia, and Nino Macharashvili, Director of the UnionofTbilisi Multifunctional Libraries.

The event was held in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Public Defender’s Office and the UnionofTbilisi Multifunctional Libraries, with the support of the European Union.