Gender Equality and Women’s Rights
Special report reflects the situation on women's rights and gender equality issues in the country.
According to the report, achieving gender equality still remains a serious challenge in the area of human rights protection in Georgia. Society still lives in stereotypical environment, where in most cases violence against women in families is justified, the number of early marriages is high, women constitute a minority at the level of decision-making and cases of the violation of rights due to gender identity and sexual orientation are frequent.
Women’s rights are violated mostly in families – a place where a person must feel herself most protected. In the reporting period the scale and severity of violence against women and domestic violence has been disturbing. In the previous year 17 women have been killed as a result of domestic violence.
Regardless of the fact that the Public Defender of Georgia called for the transformation of early marriages into an issue needing special attention, no efficacious steps have been taken to improve the existing practice. It is true, that Parliament of Georgia criminalized forceful marriage, but implementation of existing regulations in practice still remain a main challenge.
It is commendable that in 2014 the status of single parent was defined, legislation of domestic violence was refined, and the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence was signed. The National Strategy of Violence Prevention was elaborated, which covered different areas of violence, but with respect to the specifics of the issue, it would be better to create a document separately addressing strategy of prevention of gender-based violence against women.
It must be noted that efficacious steps have not been taken towards encouragement of women’s political participation; none of the recommendations on the improvement of rights of LGBT people has been considered. Economical empowerment of women still remains a challenge, especially economic activity and participation in country-wide processes of economic development of women living in rural areas, IDP women, and conflicts affected women.
