On May 7, 2018, the Public Defender of Georgia presented a monitoring report on the implementation of the Action Plan 2015-2016 of the State Strategy for Civic Equality and Integration. She spoke about the gaps identified by the Council of National Minorities of the Public Defender in the implementation of the plan and presented recommendations.

When assessing the effectiveness of the programs implemented and the policy pursued by the state in the field of civic integration and protection of the rights of ethnic minorities, the Council of National Minorities under the Public Defender found that information provided to national minorities about state services and efforts of state agencies was insufficient. It is necessary to promote participation of national minorities in the decision-making process and increase their representation, ratify the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages and promote the participation of women of national minorities in civil and political processes.

Access to quality, preschool, higher or vocational education, supply of multilingual textbooks, training and retraining of teachers and their replacement with new staff, represent challenges in the regions populated by national minorities; the rate of teachers’ failure in qualification tests is high at schools of minority languages.

It is pleasant that in accordance with the recommendations of the Public Defender, the Ministry of Education and Science is already working on reflecting the ethnic diversity of our country in multilingual textbooks; certain steps have been taken to improve the knowledge of the state language, but important challenges still remain in the mentioned direction.

The report highlights the importance of demonstrating the cultural heritage of national minorities and integrating it with the tourism sphere for preserving culture and creating tolerant environment, as well as the issue of rehabilitation of the monuments of Georgian cultural heritage related to national minorities.

Provision of information about ongoing developments to national minorities, as well as provision of correct and objective information about national minorities to the Georgian-language population, remains a challenge.

Monitoring made it clear that national minorities are provided with scarce information about the developments ongoing in or relating to Georgia. In addition, information provided to the Georgian-language population about culture, traditions and values ​​of national minorities, or their positive participation in the life of the country, is insufficient.

The event is supported by the Promoting Integration, Tolerance and Awareness Program (PITA) of the UN Association of Georgia (UNAG), which is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).