In March, 2015 five nongovernmental organizations sent reports on the state of human rights in Georgia to the UN Human Rights Council.

The HRHT periodic report reviewed five major issues: rights of prisoners, discrimination of persons with disabilities, politically motivated discrimination, gender-based discrimination on working places and conditions of human rights defenders.

“The state acknowledged facts of prisoners’ torture in the past years so the convicts need psycho-social rehabilitation that is provided only by NGOs in Georgia. Our resource is not enough. It is necessary that the state launched and implemented programs for the rehabilitation of torture victims. The state has not studied the needs of the prisoners with disabilities and has not developed any program to make their conditions in penitentiary facilities adequate. In accordance to our report, there is no adequate environment for the prisoners with disabilities in Georgian penitentiary facilities,” Nino Elbakidze said.

She added that politically motivated discrimination is another issue. After [2014] elections about 2000 public servants were sacked from about 55 local municipalities because of their political affiliations.

“The third issue was gender-based discrimination. We reported about women’s rights and problems related with maternity leaves in Georgia. The fifth issue was about human rights defenders. After the presentation, we voiced our recommendations during the meeting organized by the UN Human Rights Council. Afterwards we had individual meetings with the European and American missions. Namely, we met missions from Canada, USA, Poland, Switzerland, Norway and Czech Republic,” the board chair of the HRHT said.

Next round of the UPR will take place in November and the UN Human Rights Council will hear representatives of the Government of Georgia.

“Currently, we do not know whose recommendations will be presented to the Government of Georgia. We hope our recommendations will also be selected and in future the Government of Georgia will take responsibility to implement them,” Nino Elbakidze said.

HRHT plans to present the joint submission to the UPR to the Georgian society in near future.