The project is implemented in partnership with the Union Saphari and the Human Rights House Tbilisi and aims at globally addressing the issue of sexual violence towards women and children in Georgia and undertaking concrete steps that will help open up public debate on this issue, will elevate the suffering of the victims, for the first time, will pilot the services for the victims and propose relevant legislative amendments to the parliament of Georgia to improve the existent legislation.

Lela Tsiskarishvili, the head of GCRT says that, on the one hand, the project aims at providing a special service to the victims of sexual violence, and on the other hand, opens a public debate and raises public awareness about the topic as far as it is such a stigmatized topic that people do not speak about sexual harassment. “Within the project, we will directly help the victims of sexual violence as well as we will closely work with the people who potentially have some connections to the victims – we will provide them comprehensive information and will intensively work with them in order to enable them identify victims of sexual violence and provide some help. Such people are teachers, social workers and doctors. We will train them”- says Lela Tsiskarishvili.

The UNICEF study of 2013 revealed that almost half of the Georgian population considers violence against children (VAC) to be acceptable. 60 per cent of the population believes that using violent disciplinary measures are more effective than nonviolent ones. For the most part, society considers acts of domestic violence against children a family matter and as such is against direct involvement. The study also found that in the event a citizen decides to intervene, s/he often does not know to which agency to appeal. In addition, a large majority of professionals (60%) working with children, who are obligated by law to respond to VAC cases, are not aware of their responsibilities and deeply believe that the involving into family affairs is a sensitive issue, and prefer not becoming involved.

Public Defender of Georgia also pays attention to the shortcomings in the activities of law enforcement bodies in its 2010 report and states that “police has authority to draw up deterrent orders in case of domestic violence mostly in case of psychic, economic violence and sometimes in case of coerce but not in case of physical or sexual violence.”

UN statistics about quantitative index of rape in 63 countries do not contain data from Georgia. According to Sopho Tabagua from Union Safari, “sexual violence is a hard traumatic fact in the life of a person. It destroys the person’s mechanisms for dealing the problem, loses the feeling of future prospects, causes various physical traumas and health problems. That’s why nobody talks about it and becomes tabooed topic. Therefore it’s hard to talk about statistics.” 

According to Lela Tsiskarishvili, sexual violence is much tabooed topic in Georgia and this crime is rarely exposed to the society. Therefore we can consider that the statics from MIA cannot reflect reality regarding the sexual violence in Georgia. People do not apply to the police as they are ashamed.

Sopho Tabaghua, Union Saphari: “After the August war in 2008, there were some information about sexual violence, some of them as myths, however NGOs working in Shida Kartli had information regarding the specific cases. The mentioned project will give us opportunity to not only improve legislation but also to offer rehabilitation service in Tbilisi and in Shida Kartli to the women and children who became the victims of sexual harassment.”

According to Lela Tsiskarishvili, the project was first initiated by the former head of Saphari Natalia Zazashvili, who worked on the project in Summer 2012, before she died, even being very ill: “That time the project did not succeed, but we did not give up and were even more encouraged to continue working on the topic and luckily we got funding from EC this time. The experience we gained during the years showed that we had to create something very specialized for the victims of sexual violence and legislative basis should have been improved regarding sexual crimes.”

Despite the gravity of the problem, Georgian legislation is too old and far from European standards. Moreover, according to Baia Pataraia, the executive director of Saphari, the current legislation does not really differ much from the soviet one. Within the current project Union Saphari analyzed Georgian legislation in comparison with the international law and drafted legislative amendments which claims that core changes shall be introduced to the Georgian law.

Baia Pataraia:”According to our draft law, the chapter on sexual crime has been revised totally in the criminal code of Georgia. The definition of the rape has been introduced. Several “soviet articles” regarding buggery and other wrong sexual connections has been cancelled. In addition to that the new article has been introduced which is known as “Stoking” in the US and European legislation.”