On September 5-6, 2022, a meeting of heads of national human rights institutions from the OSCE region was held in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, where the issues of resilience and strengthening of national human rights institutions were discussed. The organizers of the event invited the Public Defender of Georgia to talk about her personal experience regarding the challenges faced by the institution and the ways of addressing the challenges.

In her speech, the Public Defender talked about the frequent incidents of threats, attacks and obstruction of the implementation of the mandate given by the constitution to the Public Defender’s Office in recent years. She noted that she personally and her entire office had been under attack through discrediting and disinformation campaign from the senior officials and violent groups.

Nino Lomjaria informed the participants in the meeting about the steps and activities taken in response to the challenges, emphasizing the special importance of the support of international mechanisms and organizations.

“A good example of such support was for instance a special visit of the CoE‘s CPT, which organized a monitoring visit following publication of our report regarding the informal governance in prisons. CPT confirmed our findings and this enabled us and the government to sit together and work on the identified problems”, said the Public Defender.

At the end, Nino Lomjaria emphasized that despite the attacks and discrediting campaign, the trust of citizens and the support of international community give the Public Defender and her office motivation and strength to do the important work assigned to them by the constitution.