Human Rights to the Regions – Annual Report of Human Rights House Tbilisi Monitoring

Human Rights House Tbilisi prepared a report Human Rights to the Regions – annual report about the state of human rights and basic freedoms in Georgia. 

Monitoring by the Human Rights House Tbilisi (HRHT) revealed violation of civil-political and social-economic rights of citizens. Ongoing developments in the country, existing hard social and economic state, instable state policy create problems in the field of human rights too.

 

The Report revealed the violations of human rights of national and ethnic minorities, as well as violation of the rights of religious minorities. It is noteworthy that the Report pays particular attention to social issues, together with other human rights problems, and that the findings from the monitoring are vivid examples of how grave the human rights state is in the country today. The monitoring demonstrated that effective protection of human rights is also an issue. Faulty legislative regulations breach human rights at the initial stage. The same can be said about the rights of socially indigent persons, IDPs and eco-migrants. The state of human rights of ethnic and religious minority groups shall be discussed separately. A number of miscarriages of practice were revealed, and in concrete cases the inactivity of government officials and law enforcement bodies aggravated the problem and further complicated the current grave state of human rights. To improve the situation, it is suggested that relevant institutions implement the recommendations of the project that are represented in the Report. In various cases the report suggests improving the legislative basis, creating additional regulation tools, and improving practice in order to change state policy towards concrete problems. 

HRHT recommends the Government of Georgia to ensure more engagement of the people in the elaboration process of a declaration on the legislative level. Namely, citizens should have a chance for their registration in the unified data base of socially vulnerable families and for it to happen not with a computer but with human resources. One of the recommendations of the HRHT to the Tbilisi City Hall refers to the eviction problem of homeless people. The Organization believes it is inadmissible for the legal owner of a property to forcibly evict a homeless person from the accommodation or for workers of building companies or other non-public servants to participate in this process.

The Annual Report of the HRHT – Human Rights to the Regions lists recommendations to the local self-governmental bodies, the Ministry of IDPs from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees, Ministry of Labor, Healthcare and Social Welfare and investigation bodies. 

One-year monitoring of the mobile group of human rights defenders in the regions of Georgia demonstrated that defense of the freedom of religion and rights of ethnic minorities were the most problematic among the defense of civil and political rights. The Report recommends the investigative bodies to conduct timely and effective investigation into each case and resolve them.

Violation of social and economic rights of citizens is still a main problem. The monitoring revealed problems about the right to adequate housing, right to live in adequate environment, defense of IDP rights, state of human rights of the people victimized by natural disaster. The Report is composed of several chapters. Its structure was designed in accordance with the classification of the facts of violation, and similar violations were unified under one chapter in order to simplify the process of information accumulation for interested parties.

The Annual Report of the HRHT “Human Rights to the Regions” was prepared with the financial support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Georgia. The Report covers period from August 1, 2014 to August 1, 2015.

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