Educational mandate of the Public Defender

One of the main priorities of the Public Defender of Georgia is to teach human rights and freedoms. To this end, the Office promotes the integration of human rights topics in formal and non-formal education.

The Public Defender receives and reviews complaints and applications relating to the right to education, the content and process of education at preschool, secondary, higher and vocational education levels;

The topics of human rights and their content in the training programmes for persons involved in the educational process (teachers, administration of educational institutions, etc.).

The Office also works to ensure access to human rights education.

The grounds for applying to the Public Defender may be:

• The reflection of human rights topics in educational programmes in a way that is inconsistent with definitions of rights under international standards (e.g. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UN conventions on human rights, etc.);
• Existence of texts, illustrations or definitions inconsistent with human rights principles (e.g. text and visual material that normalize discriminatory views, proselytism, indoctrination, intolerant attitude or similar approaches that contradict human rights) in the school textbooks for schoolchildren or teachers, or in educational materials intended for university students;
• Allocation of fewer hours for citizenship education than required by the national curriculum;
• Issues related to the quality of human rights education in training programmes involving teachers and administration of educational institutions;
• Misinterpretation of universal human rights principles, religious and political propaganda in the process of human rights education.