UN expert evaluates Georgia’s efforts to combat domestic violence

United Nations (UN) human rights expert Dubravka Simonovic says Georgia has taken huge steps to protect women’s rights but stressed more should be done to combat domestic violence.

Simonovic, who was on her first official visit to Georgia, said violence against women should be spoken about in society instead of it being regarded as "private, family business”. 

This evening the UN expert provided preliminary findings of her five-day stay in Georgia to local media. She is due to release her final recommendations at the 32nd session of the UN Human Rights Council in June 2016.

Her major recommendations for included: 

• Georgia should continue working to raise public awareness of domestic violence, especially in villages and rural areas; 
• Georgia should speed up its efforts to join with the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence; 
• The Government should provide exact, official data about instances of violence;  
• Georgia should continue training law enforcers, teachers and judiciary representatives about women’s rights; encourage  more female police officers; 
• The local Government should ensure more shelters for victims of violence as currently there are only three such state-run facilities for women; 
• The Georgian Government should address the issue of selective abortions; 
• Promotion of more female Members of Parliament; 
• Imposing stricter sanctions for offenders and not only restrictive orders; and 
• Amending the school curriculum to ensure more information about human rights.  

The expert said the Georgian Government had adopted scores of laws to address the "global problem” of domestic violence and advised the state bodies to continue their efforts in this direction.

Simonovic collected her information by meeting Government authorities, civil society representatives and other figureheads in Tbilisi, as well as eastern Kakheti and Shida Kartli regions.

While in Georgia she also visited a shelter for victims of domestic violence, a camp for internally displaced persons and met with individual victims of gender-based violence and female ethnic minority groups. 

Simonovic was appointed the UN’s Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2015 to recommend ways to combat domestic violence at national, regional and international levels. Her role was to specifically investigate violence against women, find the causes and consequences of this and recommend ways to eliminate this violence.