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Public Defender Issues General Proposal on Development of Mechanism for Elimination of Discriminatory Vacancies

On May 5, 2017, the Public Defender of Georgia addressed the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia with a general proposal to develop guidelines for raising employers’ awareness, which would reflect the recommendations on formulation of job announcements, use of discriminatory terms and adjustment of the announcements to the specifics of the job without applying discriminatory restrictions.

Before the launch of the study of current applications, the Public Defender's Office had addressed a vacancy site (www.jobs.ge) with a general proposal, as well as Elite-Service Ltd. with a recommendation concerning the use of discriminatory restrictions in the public vacancy announcements.

The high number of the applications submitted to the Public Defender's Office with regard to the discriminatory restrictions in the public vacancy announcements and a considerable number of the cases indentified by the Public Defender at his own initiative showed that discriminatory job announcements are still posted on the web pages, which strengthens the existing negative stereotypes in the society. Accordingly, given the importance and the scale of the issue, the Public Defender concluded that involvement of state agencies was necessary.

It is indicated in the general proposal that the job announcement should be oriented to the specific elements of the job and should not result in the automatic exclusion of a group of persons on any grounds.

In addition, the Public Defender called on the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs to develop a mechanism that would authorize the Public Defender to identify violations and draw up protocols, after which, the violations would be assessed by common courts, in order to prevent and monitor the use of discriminatory restrictions in job announcements, as well as to hold the employer or/and announcer accountable in case of publication of such announcements.

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