On 28 March 2018, the Human Rights and Civil Integration Committee of the Parliament of Georgia continued the hearing of the reports on the implementation of the Public Defender's recommendations.

Reports were presented by the Ministry of IDPs from the Occupied Territories, Labour, Health and Social Affairs, Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport, State Minister’s Office of Reconciliation and Civic Equality, Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure, municipal authorities, Tbilisi City Hall, Central Election Commission and Public Broadcaster.

After presentiation of the reports, the Public Defender asked questions to the reporters and underlined the slow pace of positive changes aimed at improving the situation of victims of violence, conflict-affected citizens, persons with disabilities or other vulnerable persons.

Nino Lomjaria once again emphasized the necessity of studying the problems of social workers and creating proper working conditions for them. She noted that the substitution of social workers, who went on strike a few days ago, by other employees of the Ministry could not improve the situation, including in small group homes, where the monitoring conducted by the Public Defender showed violence among children, including sexual violence, which has not been responded by any relevant service.

Situation has not been improved in biological families, from where children are mainly removed because of poverty. The Public Defender talked about the issue of licensing of religious boarding schools and gaps in terms of monitoring the rights situation in the mentioned institutions by the state.

No enough measures are taken to eliminate problems in the field of mental health care, beneficiaries are not provided assistance as needed. Infrastructural projects are only partially carried out and there is no progress in health care services. Qualifications and number of the personnel are still low, the quality of medicines is low, forms of treatment are outdated. Neither strategy nor action plan has been developed for deinstitutionalization. No community services have been developed, which causes overcrowding of institutions.

With regard to unsolved social issues, the Public Defender emphasized the necessity for changing the social assistance methodology for eliminating drawbacks in the process of granting scores to the families and non-operation of programmes intended for families with many children and single mothers, as well as older persons.

No uniform standard of provision of food and shelter for socially vulnerable people has been developed at the municipal level. Most of IDPs still live in damaged facilities. Population affected by the 2008 war are still waiting for compensations (especially in the village of Zardiaantkari).

No data on children dropping out of school or cases of early marriages are collected by the relevant services. No needs of children left beyond school are determined and no data on children living and working on the street are collected. Children with disabilities are not registered in schools according to their needs. Infrastructural situation in schools and preschool institutions in the high mountain regions, as well as the qualifications of educators, remains problematic.

The Public Defender spoke about the problems of employment of ethnic minorities in the municipal bodies and noted that she was ready to work closely with all branches of the government to solve the mentioned and other problems.

* The Parliament of Georgia adopted a decree on the Public Defender's Report on the Situation of Human Rights and Freedoms on 19 July 2018. The decree includes 235 recommendations of the Public Defender, addressees of which are the Government of Georgia, ministries and other agencies. 11 agencies presented their reports on March 27-28.