Another public debate of the Public Defender of Georgia was held on May 1, 2017. The theme of the debates was: Labour of Women, Persons with Disabilities and Children: Problems and Challenges. The debate was led by Ana Arganashvili, the project manager of Partnership for Human Rights.

In his opening speech, Public Defender Ucha Nanuashvili briefly reviewed the situation in the field of labour, related challenges and measures that are necessary to be taken, as well as deficiencies in the labour legislation and practice.

"The situation of labour safety is alarming in the country. Almost every day we hear about people injured or killed in the workplace, or violation of their rights. However, in spite of this, the country still does not have an effective system for supervising labour conditions and safety, while the existing program cannot provide effective response to or prevention of similar cases. It should be noted that Georgia is the only member state of the International Labour Organization, where labour inspectorate is not functioning," said the Public Defender of Georgia.

Deputy Public Defender Ekaterine Skhiladze presented the results of the surveys conducted in the field of labour of children, women and persons with disabilities. She noted that children have to do job irrelevant to their age and psycho-physical level of development due to poverty and inadequate living conditions; in addition, for this reason they often drop out of school or miss classes due to seasonal job. 571 000 children aged 5-17 years live in Georgia; 24 400 thousand out of them are involved in labour, 63,9% of which (about 15600 children) are involved in hazardous work.

State programs of employment of persons with disabilities are inadequate and ineffective, the proof of which is the low number of the employed persons with disabilities. According to the data of 2016, only 52 persons with disabilities were employed in the public sector and 32 – in private sector.

The Deputy Public Defender focused on pre-contractual labour relations when talking about the labour discrimination against women. She underlined the cases when employers impose age or appearance criteria. Sexual and gender harassment, or dismissal/refusal of employment on grounds of pregnancy or marital status are frequent in the workplace. The rights situation of self-employed women is also alarming.

Speeches were also delivered at the debate by Elba Jgerenaia, Head of the Labour and Employment Policy Department of the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs, Tamar Makharadze, Director of the Research Center of Persons with Disabilities of Tbilisi State University, and Gvantsa Khonelidze, representative of the organization Women's Gaze.