Public Defender Promised Media and Civil Society to Work with the Principle of Open Door

Shorena Kakabadze, Kutaisi

“We have arrived here to share our vision with you, to work out joint action plan which will become an orienteer for our future successful work in the field of human rights,” Public Defender of Georgia started his field-visits to the regions of Georgia with this statement. Ucha Nanuashvili’s first meeting with the representatives of media and civil society was held in Kutaisi on January 22.

Many questions were asked and answered during the two-hour meeting. Public Defender spoke about plans and perspectives of his office’s cooperation with nongovernmental organizations and about necessity of reinforcement of Public Defender’s regional offices.

Problems in local self-governments, persecution of people on political grounds, oppression on media, current situation in penitentiary establishments, IDP problems, etc it is incomplete list of problems which were raised during the meeting with the ombudsman.

“There are more problems in the view of human rights in the regions of Georgia. So, we should reinforce our regional offices and to eradicate all problems with joint efforts. We will respond to any incident as soon as we receive information about it. We will work with the principle of open door because we believe Public Defender’s Office shall be closer to people. Regional offices shall work more actively than they did before,” said Ucha Nanuashvili.

He called upon the representatives of the nongovernmental organizations to be more active, to provide the Ombudsman’s office with the least information about the violation of human rights.

“It is significant to spread information about similar facts; people shall make comments in order to allow us to work on them and to finally achieve final goals together –rights of any citizen shall be protected. Believe me, it will be very difficult to fight against it otherwise,” said the public defender.

Ucha Nanuashvili spoke about necessity to open centers like Center for Children’s Rights; Center for Gender Issues, etc. The Ombudsman also spoke about parliamentary secretary who shall represent their office in Kutaisi; he also spoke about Public Defender’s role in peacekeeping negotiations. Also, Nanuashvili spoke about the public monitoring group of penitentiary establishments, whose model is under consideration and which will implement its duty on the professional level.

According to the Public Defender’s clarification, he plans meeting with the representatives of the penitentiary ministry and civil society next week. “We will speak about this issue. I think, many factors shall be considered in this direction. We should work out rules of conduct, special trainings shall be held to teach to people how to act in the frame of this group. We also consider the model which acted previously. However, it must be accomplished. I think, number of regional representatives shall increase in this group.”

Representatives of the civil society positively evaluated Public Defender’s future plans and his views on the raised issues. It is important for them that their recommendations sent to the Public Defender’s Office will not remain unresponded.

NGOs were particularly interested in Ucha Nanuashvili’s initiative to prepare thematic reports. Public Defender clarified that working only on annual reports and its presentation at the parliament is not enough. It is necessary to work more in concrete fields.