Regarding United Nations Universal Periodic Review

www.ombudsman,ge

Public Defender welcomes participation of Georgia in United Nations Universal Periodic Review and is pleased that Georgia took into consideration most of UN recommendations regarding human rights protection. 

On November 15, 2013 UPR Info published Mid-term Implementation Assessment of Georgia. The assessment report provides analysis of 133 recommendations, according to which at this stage the Georgian government has fully or partially fulfilled 75% of these recommendations. 

Protection and support of human rights is one of the fundamental principles of the state policy and in this regard these recommendations precisely have to become bases for creation and implementation of Georgia’s human rights protection policy. 

Public Defender considers fulfillment of the recommendation as a positive step, however regards that many such issues fell under the recommendations that have not been fulfilled or were partially fulfilled that Public Defender had highlighted on numerous occasions in his annual reports or recommendations. Among them is the ratification of following conventions: Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance; Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence and No.183 Maternity Protection Convention of International Labour Organization. 

Recommendations concerning providing adequate housing to homeless people; independent and effective investigation; consistent state policy on labour, health and employment and return of so called religious buildings to their historical owners remain unfulfilled. 

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The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a unique mechanism of United Nations, which involves a periodic review of the human rights situation of 193 UN Member States.  

The UPR is a mechanism based on equal treatment for every country, which provides the opportunity for each State to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to discuss ways for solving the challenges they currently face. 

The UPR process takes place every four and half years; however in order to reduce this interval, Geneva based NGO “UPR Info” publishes mid-term implementation assessments to evaluate the human rights situation two years after the examination at the UPR. The methodology used by UPR Info is to assess the progress of implementation of recommendations based on comments of States, NGOs, and National Institutions for Human Rights. 

The Office of Public Defender actively cooperates with “UPR Info”.