On March 17, 2015, with organization of the Public Defender’s Office and support of the UN Women a meeting “Women’s rights and gender equality issues in the Public Defender Parliamentary Report for 2014” was held. The meeting was aimed at discussing a draft of the Public Defender Parliamentary Report with participation of non-governmental and international organizations working on women’s rights and gender equality issues. Also, presentation of the report on the work conducted by the PDO in the area of integration of gender equality issues also took place.

At the meeting, speeches were made by First Deputy Public Defender Paata Beltadze and UN Women Country Representative in Georgia Erika Kvapilova.

The First Deputy Public Defender of Georgia presented the PDO report on gender equality. Paata Beltadze stressed importance of the issue and spoke about challenges existing in Georgia with regards to gender equality and women’s rights. According to the report, one of the main directions of the work of the Public Defender’s Office is promotion of gender equality and the Office has taken various steps in this direction, including, establishment of a special department and elaboration of strategic documents.

The First Deputy public Defender emphasized the situation and key challenges in the country; especially, violence against women and the problem of domestic violence, identification of which is the biggest challenge in Georgia, scale and acuteness of women killings, the issue of early marriage. Paata Beltadze spoke about importance of women participation on the decision-making level and noted that it is important for the state to take effective steps for development of temporary special measures. Discriminatory approaches in labour relations, etc, still remain a challenge in Georgia.

Head of the Department of Gender Equality of the Public Defender’s Office of Georgia Ekaterine Skhiladze presented main directions of the Public Defender draft parliamentary report to the audience. This year, new themes were added to the Public Defender Parliamentary Report such as: women, peace and security; reproductive health and rights; a role of media sources in protection of women’s rights and achieving gender equality, etc. The report also encompasses information and recommendations on the following issues: women participation in decision-making processes; economic activity and labour rights of women; human trafficking; violence against women and domestic violence; early marriage; legal rights of LGBT persons.

During the discussion held at the end of the meeting, participants presented their views on the draft report. It should be noted that majority of the participants positively assessed the work of the Public Defender and thematic variety of the issues presented in the report, as well as accuracy of the content.

When summarizing the event, the First Deputy Public Defender once again noted positive results of the joint work and expressed their full readiness to continue consultation meetings in the future for effective promotion of women’s rights and gender equality issues.