The National Minorities Council working at the office of Public Defender of Georgia has worked out the draft recommendations for mass media outlets. The recommendations were elaborated by legal, media and information working groups of the Council in order to fulfill the requirements of Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for Protection of National Minorities.
The draft includes information on the problems of national minorities living in Georgia, the working groups “document” those problems and offer Parliament, government, mass media and public certain recommendations to solve those problems.
While discussing the tendencies of coverage of issues concerning national minorities by Georgian media the authors of the draft state that “some mass media outlets clearly demonstrate ethnic intolerance and xenophobic attitudes”.
The authors of the draft believe that these problems pave the way to increasing the ethnic tensions in the country.
Representatives of various ethnic Diasporas existing in Georgia took part in the elaboration of the draft recommendations (including Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Greeks, Assyrians, Kurds, Ossetians, and Latvians etc.); besides, representatives of Public Defender and European Center for Minorities also participated in the work.
Representatives of Alpe Foundation greatly contributed to the creation of the draft document.
The plenary session of the National Minorities Council will take place in a few days, during the meeting the Council will discuss and approve those recommendations and then submit them to the corresponding state bodies.
Source: Media.ge