The Human Rights Academy of the Public Defender of Georgia organized training on the theme – “Promotion of Human Rights Education at the Level of General Education” in Gudauri on July 12-14, 2017. The training was attended by 18 civic education teachers of Tbilisi public and private schools. The aim of the training was to raise awareness of human rights among teachers at the level of general education and to elaborate recommendations for the purpose of improving civic education materials.

During the three-day training, the participants got acquainted with the following issues: Major issues of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, methods of identification of and response to the cases of violence against children, scopes of imposing sanctions on pupils or encouraging them by school administration, the Georgian legislative framework of fight against discrimination, essence of equality, forms of discrimination, encouragement of discrimination, hate speech, bullying, police actions and child’s rights, criminal procedures in the juvenile justice, general issues of gender equality, basic aspects of domestic violence, issues related to early marriages, etc.

The teachers listened to theoretical material and took part in discussions, presentations and group exercises, analyzed the part of human rights education of civil education, identified problems and developed recommendations for improving the quality of teaching.

The training was led by Ana Iluridze, Head of the Department of Gender Equality of the Public Defender's Office, Ketevan Shubashvili, Head of the Department of Equality, Gvantsa Chkhaidze, Deputy Head of the Department of Criminal Justice, and Tamta Babunashvili, Chief Specialist of the Center for Child’s Rights.

During the training, the teachers identified main challenges in the field of human rights education - the need for teachers' professional development and raising their qualifications, the need for improving textbooks and methodical materials. Consequently, the Public Defender’s Office will continue to raise awareness of teachers and carry out other activities (communicate with state agencies in order to improve school materials) in order to promote human rights education at the level of general education.