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State of Children’s Rights in Georgia

August 13, 2015
 
Nino Tsotsoria

Child abuse, violation of the right to education, poverty and inadequate living conditions, pre-school education and access to health care- these are the problems that have been revealed during the monitoring conducted by the Child Right’s Center of the Public Defender which examined the state of children’s rights. According to the center, it is important to make children the leading priority for the state. There is still a lot of work to do in order to arrange the state of rights. 

“The state of rights still requires to be improved and strengthened. We find many deficiencies in various fields. Regions require special attention, places that are cut off from big cities. Those services that more or less work in cities, less efficiently work in regions, especially in mountainous regions,” told the head of Child’s Rights Center of the Public Defender, Maia Gedevanisvhili to humanrights.ge.

According to her, deficiencies of the state of rights in regions are caused by lack of qualified personnel which works with children. Majority of the recommendations by the center are about necessity of having qualified and experienced staff. The second part of the recommendations includes strengthening of services and informing employees of competent agencies, whose obligation is to provide information about special programs for the society. 

“In the districts that are cut off from big cities, there is a lack of information regarding social services. I mean the state aid programs for the families with children who are below the poverty line.  Not only the families who need help, but also the municipalities do not know about these social assistance programs,”- says Maia Gedevanishvili. 

The results of the monitoring showed that the fundamental rights and freedoms of children are constantly violated throughout the country. The problem is the universal declaration of protecting rights to education and health care. According to Maia Gedevanishvili, access to health care is problematic, especially in regions.

“It is true that number of aspects has been improved but primary health care issues still require improvement. I mean, to provide dispensaries for children, ambulance, medicine supply, medical specialists and so on, everything that is related to health care. A number of events have to be implemented by 2015.  Let’s hope that there will be real results in districts and villages,”-states Maia Gedevanisvhili. 

According to the monitoring of the center, the most critical issue regarding the state of rights is violence against children. The steps taken by the state and society in order to eliminate the problem are not enough. Regarding this, there is a different situation in cities and villages. According to the observation of the Ombudsman’s Child’s Right Center, physical violence is more common in regions, while there are more facts of bullying (a long-term oppression or abuse of a person by one or several other persons) in cities.

While talking about child abuse, Maia Gedevanishvili points out a sense of impunity and lack of civil awareness. 

“Few days ago, a young student girl called us from the village of one of the regions and told us about a fact of physical violence by family members which happens permanently against a 9-year-old boy who is her neighbor. The child is a victim of a serious violence and expresses depressive thoughts. He does not want to live anymore and says that he will never get married in order not to have a family. A witness of child abuse was not only this girl, but , in most cases citizens refuse to testify in appropriate bodies. This is a problem of lack of civil awareness in the society, which is a job of the state,”- says Maia Gedevanishvili whilte talking to humanrights.ge.

According to her, the citizens cannot identify whether the action is violent or not. Even those people, who are professionally responsible to prevent these kinds of facts, are not able to differentiate legal provisions from the wide range of violent actions.
 
Protection of children’s rights is provided for by the order of the Ministers of Health Care, Internal Affairs and Education, regarding the measures directed to elimination of all types of violence against children. According to this order, if required, the agency, which is competent about the action, gets the case through the transfer between three agencies. 

Issues of so-called problematic groups are separately described in the report of the study regarding the state of children’s rights. The problematic groups combine juvenile convicts and children who live and work on streets. 

The work conducted on the issues of homeless children outlined nonexistence of documents as the most significant problem. 

“The problem is that children live on streets and because of this, practically, all of their rights are violated. However, we can outline technical rights; they do not have birth certificates, which of course is a prerequisite for many problems. It is unable to register them and gather the statistical information. This is the most difficult group of children. The state implements the program for providing shelter for homeless children, which includes two directions. One is the establishment of day centers; there are six this type of children’s houses in Tbilisi; the second are the mobile groups, who work with homeless children directly on streets,”- says the head of Child’s Rights Center, Maia Gedevanishvili.

There are social workers, psychologists and peer educators in the mobile groups. Peer educator is a young person, who has an experience of living on streets, through the care of the state, he/she left the streets, and his /her life was settled. 

“We frequently see beggars together with children in Tbilisi and there are lots of them. They might be on one specific street for a whole day, but police or social services do not pay attention to them. Apparently, this referral does not work well and one of our recommendations is to implement the job provided for by the order properly. One issue is to strengthen the civil awareness of the society. The second is that, those workers must work with the children whose job is to fulfill the actions regarding the violence,”- told Maya Gedevanishvili to Humanrights.ge.

A lawyer of Child’s Rights Center of the Public Defender, Tamta Babunashvili, talked about the state of juvenile’s rights according to the results of their monitoring. As she mentioned, significant measures have to be taken for re-socialization and rehabilitation of juveniles.
 
“Monitoring is usually conducted according to the thematic standards. These are the minimum rules of the UN, aka Beijing Rules, where basic standards are defined. These standards are checked during the monitoring. The basic tendency, because of which the children end up in the penitentiary facilities, is caused by economical and social factors. Facts of a repeat offence are also high, usually with the same charged,”- says the lawyer Tamta Babunashvili.

According to her, in order to contribute to integration of convicts in the society, specific actions are implemented inside the juvenile prisons. 

“Prison N11 is linked to the public school N123. The lessons are held for the convicts as usual and they receive certificates. It is also important to provide necessary works after they leave the facility for their re-socialization and in order to prevent a repeat offence,”- says the lawyer of Child’s Rights Center, Tamta Babunashvili. 

According to the head of the Child’s Rights Center of Public Defender, Maia Gdevanishvili, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is one of the perfect conventions. It combines all general rights together with the fundamental rights of the child. 

“All rights of children are important. It is significant to work with the problematic groups. But, in my opinion, the most important thing is how you treat a child. 60% of the Georgian population thinks that bringing up children with violent methods is acceptable. This is a data of UNICEF in 2013 and it is a very serious problem. Another problem is access to health care in the regions, lack of qualified teachers regarding education, but the most important is to change attitude towards children. Increasing a level of education for professionals who work with children and their humanization is necessary, the latter is an important component for parents too,”- told Maia Gedevanishvili to humanrights.ge. 

With the increase of civil awareness, of the Child’s Rights Center of the Public Defender, also recommends making the child as a primary priority of the state, which, according to them, will gradually solve all the problems that exist in our country regarding the juveniles. 

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