The Vice-Speaker, the Chair of Gender Equality Council, Mrs. Manana Kobakhidze and GEC members, Guguli Magradze and Nana Keinishvili met with the UN Special Rapporteur, Ms. Dubravka Simonovic. The parties spoke about violence against women, reasons and consequences thereof. GEC Chair and members introduced the legislative changes in terms of rights of women.

According to Mrs. Kobakhidze, the visit of UN Special Rapporteur is very important. “Georgia, deriving under the international conventions, has assumed obligations to be implemented and in this view, we have adopted the number of legislative changes. Soon, we intend to ratify the Istanbul Convention serving to overcome violence against women and girls. As you know, we have criminalized early marriage. The Government now works on a very important special action plan the draft of which we have already developed. It is the action plan against all forms of violence. It is the first time we develop this wide-scale document in this direction. There were separate action plans, for instance on elimination of domestic violence but violence as a problem in total, has never been acknowledged in a unified action plan. I think, the plan will give the concrete action frame to every executive agency to overcome the problems, related to violence against women and girls on various levels. We have the progress in this regards. I would say that the legislative frame is very effective in our country and in the region. As to the standard, naturally we want the rights of women to be protected under the European standards. I think, we will gradually overcome these problems”.