Child Rights Policy Making by Georgian Government and Its Compliance with the UNCRC, the Record of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs
A Research Paper presented by:
GvantsaLiparteliani
(Georgia)
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for obtaining the degree of
MASTERS OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
Specialization:
Human Rights, Development and Social Justice
(HDS)
Members of the examining committee:
Karin Arts: Professor of International Law and Development
Rachel Kurian: Senior Lecturer in International Labour Economics
The Hague, The Netherlands
November 2011
Disclaimer:
This document represents part of the author’s study programme while at the Institute of Social Studies. The views stated therein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Institute.
Inquiries:
Postal address:
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Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1The Research Problem and its Background
1.1.1Socio-economic, Historical and Political Discourse of Georgia
1.2Relevance and Justification
1.3Research Objectives and Questions
1.4Methodology
1.5Sources of Information
1.5.1Primary Data
1.5.2Secondary Data
1.6Limitations and Scope of Research
Chapter 2 Theories about Children’s Rights Assessment
2.1 Concept of Monitoring
2.2 Human Rights Impact Assessment
2.3 Rights Based Approaches to Programming
Chapter 3 Juvenile Justice System Reform (JJSR)
3.1 Problem Statement
3.2 General measures of Implementation of the UNCRC
3.3 Findings
Chapter 4 Child Welfare System Reform (CWSR)
4.1 Problem Statement
4.2 General Measures of Implementation of the UNCRC
4.3 Findings
Chapter 5 Conclusion
5.1 Main Challenges for the UNCRC Application
5.2 Recommendations
5.3 List of Interviewees
5.4 References
List of Acronyms
CRPChild Rights Programming
CWChild Welfare
CWSRChild Welfare System Reform
EUEuropean Union
GCRTGeorgian Centre for Psychosocial and Medical Rehabilitation of Torture Victims
HRBAPHuman Rights-Based Approach to Programming
HRIAHuman Rights Impact Assessment
IDPInternally Displaced Person
JJJuvenile Justice
JJSRJuvenile Justice System Reform
MCLAMinistry of Corrections and Legal Assistance
MoJMinistry of Justice
MoLHSAMinistry of Labour, Health and Social Affaires
NGONon Governmental Organization
PDOPublic Defender Office
SGHSmall Group Home
UNUnited Nations
UNCRCUnited Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
UNDPUnited Nations Development Programme
UNICEFUnited Nations Children’s Fund
UPRUniversal Periodic Report
WMSWelfare Monitoring Study
Abstract
This research paper aims to explore the issue of child rights policymaking and implementation, and application of the UNCRC standards and principles by the Georgian government (represented by the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Labour, health and Social Affaires of Georgia) within the Juvenile Justice System and Child Welfare System Reforms.
In the research bellow will be analyzed above-mentioned two reforms, planned and implemented by the MoJ and MoLSHA with the help of selected articles from CRC General Comments #5, also based with the information gained from interviewees, representing government, civil society and children themselves.
Relevance to Development Studies
The topic of this research paper is about implementation of Georgian state’s international obligations taken under the UNCRC on the example of performances of two reforms implemented by two ministries. Protection of human rights in general, and, in this case, implementation of children’s rights for Georgia, as for developing country has a great importance; at the same time the issue of children’s rights is closely related to the Human Rights, Development and Social Justice specialization.
Keywords
Child Rights
Juvenile Justice
Child Welfare
Duty Bearer
UNCRC
1
Chapter 1Introduction
1.1The Research Problem and its Background
It is more than two decades ago that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (hereafter referred to as UNCRC) started to act for the children of the world. After its adoption in 1989, the UNCRC soon become the most widely ratified international treaty in the world. All 193 States Parties (which comprise all except two states: Somalia and the USA) to the Convention committed themselves to the implementation of children’s rights. The enactment of the UNCRC brought a radical change in the field – children ceased to be regarded as objects of the care and became seen as subjects of rights. Gradually, the notion of states as duty bearers in terms of promoting, respecting and fulfilling children’s rights under the UNCRC became more strong and clear (Mauras 2011:52). The rights of children increasingly have been enshrined in important documents, both at international and national levels. However, these actions in pursuit of children’s rights protection have not necessarily lived up to the worldwide expectations about UNCRC implementation (Carvalho 2008:545). Despite the major progress that was achieved in many states in terms of children’s rights protection after the UNCRC enactment, issues of fulfilling, promoting and protecting children’s rights are still urgent throughout the world (Doek 2009).
The UNCRC is the first binding international legal document that deals comprehensively with children’s rights. It contains 42 detailed provisions about all areas of children’s lives ranging from social, economic and cultural rights to civil and political rights. More importantly, the UNCRC holds and promotes the highest level of international standards and guidelines for children protection and for their implementation at regional and national levels. The UNCRC and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (hereafter referred to as the Committee) are instrumental in terms of developing and implementing various worldwide activities dedicated to the rights of children (Lee and Svevo-Cianci, 2009:767).
Georgia ratified the UNCRC without reservations in 1994 and as one of the State Parties has to fulfil all the obligations under this convention. However, international organizations operating in Georgia in the field of children’s rights, Georgian civil society organizations and Public Defender’s Office (hereafter referred to as PDO) reports regularly provide information about difficult situation of children in different directions in Georgia.
1.1.1Socio-economic, Historical and Political Discourse of Georgia
Before explaining why this research paper topic was selected, it is appropriate to share some basic information about Georgia itself. A short socio-economic, historical and political discourse will give an overall picture of the country. This will help the reader to understand the problem and its context more – the challenges and peculiarities of current child rights policymaking and implementation practices by the Georgian government, as a main duty bearer in terms of children’s rights protection and UNCRC implementation.
Georgia is a country with a population of 4.6 million. Its GDP (2010) is $ 11.66 Billion and the type of government is Republic. After 70 years of communist regime in 1991, i.e. soon before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Georgia declared independence from the USSR. Like many other post Soviet Republics, after independence Georgia was characterized by ethnic and civil conflicts in the early nineties. Currently, about 20% of the country’s total territory is not under Georgian Government control (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) and two main conflicts are still unresolved. Unstable situation in conflict regions ended by 5-day Georgian-Russian war in August of 2008. As a result of these conflicts, Russia is occupying Abkhazia and South Ossetia; also these regions are recognized as sovereign and independent countries by Russia (U.S Department of State, 2011).
Apart from the hard socio-economic problems that these conflicts have brought, between 1992 and 2008 around 300,000 ethnic Georgians were forced to leave their homes and became Internally Displaced Persons (hereafter referred to as IDPs) (Internal Displacement Monitoring Center 2011).
After the ‘Rose Revolution’ in 2003 a new government came into power and Georgia started to introduce various reforms aiming to improve the social and economic conditions of its citizens. One of the challenging problems at that time was the extreme poverty in the country: almost half of the country’s population was below the poverty line (UN Georgia 2011).
The reforms that Georgian government has embarked on still continue in different directions including strengthening the rule of law, combating the deep-rooted corruption, reforming the police, the judiciary, the educational system etc. However, these reforms will need further implementation to achieve the stated goals (United Nations Development Programme 2011).
Despite the fact that the World Bank has recognized Georgia as one of the world’s fastest-reforming economies[1], the official unemployment in 2010 was 16.9 %. The country has problems with expending trade, reducing poverty etc. The situation has worsened especially after the 2008 war shock when a new wave of IDPs became an additional burden for the Georgian economy (US Department of State 2011).
This brief information about Georgia’s socio-economic, historical and political situation helps us to understand the environment of children’s rights in the country. Georgia is a newly independent country with democratic values, willing to become a part of European Union but with the communist past-experience. It has a complicated location (and is a classical example of a buffer state, for centuries, between the Russian and Ottoman empires). While two conflicts are ongoing within its territory, and many other challenges exist, Georgia tries to deal with human rights and especially with children’s rights. This paper will explore how the Georgian government, as a main duty bearer in terms of child rights protection and implementation, is actually implementing its child rights obligations. What are the practices, challenges and successes of the process of child rights policymaking and implementation in Georgia.
As already mentioned earlier, according to the PDO reports, despite several progressive changes there is still a lot to be done to improve the situation of children in Georgia and to promote UNCRC implementation in terms of creating and implementing relevant child oriented policies and programs[2].
1.2Relevance and Justification
Children comprise 25% of Georgia’s population (Save The Children 2011). According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (hereafter referred to as UNICEF) supported Welfare Monitoring Study (WMS), almost one quarter of the households and 28% of Georgia’s children live below the poverty line. The study also shows that around 40 % of all households cannot provide themselves with enough food, or they consume the food, which sometimes endanger their health, and these households contain 37 per cent of all children (UNICEF, 2010: 3).
Concluding Observations on the Periodic Reports of Georgia to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child provide information about the main challenges of CRC implementation in Georgia and about constraints in this regard (CRC/C/GEO/CO/3. 2008).
The PDO report about the children’s rights situation in 2010 provides information about different child rights violations and various system/policy related problems within the country. According to the information of Universal Periodic Report about Georgia (hereafter referred to as UPR) problems with street children; accessibility of educational, health and social services; emotional and psychological violence in childcare institutions; and rights violations within the Juvenile Justice system are still problematic for Georgia. UPR also provides information about monitoring of childcare institutions conducted by the PDO Georgia, which has exposed systematic problems regarding lack of awareness among children concerning their rights, different forms of ill-treatment and abuse, forced labour, living conditions below minimal standards, different forms of discrimination etc. Another challenge is the living conditions for child detainees. These remain inadequate in juvenile justice facilities. The absence of relevant reintegration programmes for juvenile convicts/probationers is also a problem (UPR 2011).
Georgia adopted the Child Welfare Action Plan 2008–2011, which outlines the key intervention areas for reforming the child welfare (child care) system within the country. According to the Committee on the Rights of the Child (hereafter referred as the Committee), this “Plan did not cover all areas of the Convention”. It recommended “that Georgia incorporate the principle of the best interests of the child in all programmes and policies” (UPR 2011: 71).
It is worth noticing, that the term “child welfare” in Georgian reality means childcare and deinstitutionalization. Reducing the number of children placed in childcare institutions, providing programs for children at risk to prevent them to be placed in childcare institutions, these are major directions of the reform. (O’Brien and Cahnturidze, 2009: 18)
As we can see, the Committee, UNICEF, PDO Georgia and Georgian child rights NGOs all are indicating a lack of relevant state policy and programming and/or a need to further improve different directions towards children. As briefly shown above, children in Georgia are facing various challenges in terms of accessing basic services and enjoying the rights guaranteed by the UNCRC in different fields of their lives, but this research paper will focus only on two of them, children in need of special care and assistance: children in conflict with the law and children without a family environment.
More specifically, this research paper will focus on the example of the performance (in policymaking and implementation) of two main governmental institutions – the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs (hereafter referred to as MoLHSA) and the Ministry of Justice (hereafter referred to as MoJ). Both ministries are extremely important governmental bodies for children, especially in the last decade, when they started to create and implement reforms. This paper will provide an overview of the policymaking and implementation practices within these two ministries, with special emphasis on two reforms that are initiated and implemented by them: Juvenile Justice System Reform (hereafter referred to as JJSR) and Child Welfare System Reform (hereafter referred to as CWSR). In doing so, I will also concentrate on issue of compliance of child rights policymaking and implementation practices with the UNCRC standards and principles by the Georgian state, as the main duty bearer in fulfilling its international child rights obligations.
The main reason for selecting this research topic comes from my personal experience. Starting from 2002 I had the opportunity to work with different disadvantaged groups of children such as street children, orphans, juvenile convicts, children with disabilities and others in Georgia. During eight years I was involved in several child oriented activities. I worked in the field of juvenile justice before the reform started. For three years I was dealing with the problems of homeless children placed in childcare institutions, as a director of this orphanage. From these experiences, I do remember the first glimpse and contours of CWSR. Finally, I worked with Office of the Ombudsman of Georgia, where I was involved in monitoring process of the UNCRC implementation in childcare institutions, in prisons for juveniles and many other spheres of children’s lives. As I have worked in various places and on various positions, I had the opportunity to see the existing problems in the child rights field from different angles – from the government perspective (while working for the Ministry of Education and Science), from the civil society lens (while working for the human rights NGO and the Office of Public Defender) and from the beneficiary position as well (while working at the orphanage under the control of MoLHSA). It was also always interesting for me to find out the reasons why some services, programs and reforms were not as effective as the government institutions planned them to be. The two core ministries that I have chosen are those that currently are on the stage of implementing newly introduced reforms for children – the JJSR and the CWSR.
Considering the information about children’s rights violations provided above, the topic of this research, which aims to explore the topic of child rights policymaking and implementation by Georgian government and application of UNCRC principles and standards in these processes seems to be logical. After analyzing child rights policymaking and implementation practices of two main government institutions and assessing how UNCRC principles and standards are incorporated and used during policymaking and implementation process, it will be much more easier to find the gaps and reasons of challenges that are preventing UNCRC principles to be applied on policymaking and implementation processes, and to elaborate relevant recommendations.
The analyses of the child centered reforms of two ministries will show how different government institutions look at child rights policymaking and implementation, what is their understanding of the UNCRC, to what extent they are using it in policymaking process.
The recommendations that this research paper will generate will hopefully serve to childcare policymakers, professionals and those involved in children related work in Georgia. Absence of recent researches about child rights policymaking and implementation practices and a lack of relevant literature in Georgia also motivated me to undertake this research.
1.3Research Objectives and Questions
As already mentioned, this paper aims to explore the subject of children’s rights in Georgia but with the focus on specific directions of their rights – juvenile justice and childcare systems in Georgia. The main attention is dedicated to the role of the Georgian state as a primary duty bearer for the implementation of children’s rights.
What is Georgian government’s child rights policymaking practice and to what extent the UNCRC principles and standards are applied in the policymaking and implementation process? This is the set of questions that this Research Paper will try to answer.
More specifically, the research will try to answer the following question:
To what extent Georgian government, represented by MoJ and MoLHSA, ensures the UNCRC application in its child rights policymaking and implementation process in the JJSR and CWSR?
Together with the main research question, the research will try to answer the following sub-questions:
Are the UNCRC four general principles applied during JJSR and CWSR processes?