UNICEF: Georgia Improving Step by Step
Georgia's Public Defender's Office effort to regularly monitor the rights of children in Georgia has been encouraged by UNICEF.
Today, UNICEF released a statement which highlighted that the organisation welcomes the social protection system and the introduction of child benefits which aims to halve extreme child poverty in Georgia.
"The adoption of the Juvenile Justice Code is also an important step towards developing a child-friendly justice system," the statement said.
However, the report also reveals significant challenges that require specific actions. Violence against children remains a serious problem and it is essential to improve child referral mechanisms in the country so that professionals adequately react to cases of violence as well as for people take a proactive role and report when they witness violence.
Georgia's Public Defender's report highlighted that 70 percent of monitored children in local preschools were subject to psychological violence.
The report underlined a lack of mandatory standards, poor qualifications of caregivers and other staff, and an absence of monitoring mechanisms, all of which lead to cases of violence and to poor quality of early childhood education services in Georgia.
"The Law on Early and Pre-school Education is being developed and it is important that the Law embraces the above issues, especially the regular monitoring of the pre-school education standards" the UNICEF statement released.
UNICEF has recommended that overseeing the rights of children in formal care is vital for the further improvement of the system.
"As we see from the [Public Defender's] report, the monitoring of the small group homes revealed systemic flaws: although the living conditions of children who moved from large institutions to small group homes improved substantially, further advancement of institutional mechanisms to comply with the state child care standards are necessary, the statement said.
UNICEF expressed its readiness to continue its support towards strengthening child rights monitoring mechanisms to assess the efficiency and relevance of policies and service delivery, particularly the extent to which state institutions fulfil their obligations towards children.
"We will also continue our partnership with the Public Defender’s Office to strengthen independent monitoring of child rights that should result in children and their families claiming their rights and getting adequate responses" the statement said.
Meanwhile, UNICEF has already contributed and will continue to support the further development of child rights monitoring undertaken by different Government institutions as well as by the Public Defender and civil society organisations.