The document summarizes advocacy efforts by Save the Children Georgia to influence the Government of Georgia (GoG) to undertake commitments to children's rights and the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It outlines three commitments made by Georgia: 1) Introduction of a referral mechanism for children ages 7 to 18, 2) Increasing access to inclusive education for children with disabilities, and 3) Providing mandatory education to all out-of-school children within 5 years. It also discusses challenges in implementing commitments like a lack of child-rights based budgeting and fragmented coordination between agencies, and lessons learned about the need for holistic monitoring and cooperation with civil society.

2. Outline
 Overview of the Child Rights
Situation Report (Report Card)
 Advocacy efforts of SC Georgia
CO to influence the GoG to
undertake commitments with
respect to children’s rights
(UNCRC30 celebration)
 The commitments made by
Georgia
 Steps taken to fulfil the
commitments
 Challenges and lessons learned
in the process

3. Child Rights Situation Report – Report Card 2019
• The 2019 report covers ten main themes, which were identified by the CCY as the most
pressing issues in the child rights sector:
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Objective: Introducing a new monitoring and accountability mechanism with a
purpose of assessing the annual progress achieved by state in child rights area.
children with disabilities;
violence against children;
prevention and family support services;
child poverty and deinstitutionalization;
tendencies of institutionalized childcare;
shortcomings in the implementation of the reintegration program;
stillbirth and infant mortality;
juvenile justice system;
social work in the childcare systems and
the policies and practices of its quality application at early and preschool education.

4. Child Rights Situation Report – Report Card 2019
 The Importance of the Initiative for Save the Children and its Role in the Process:
 Exemplary state of strategic partnership established between the members of the Coalition in
fundraising and implementing projects
 As a board member of the CCY, Save the Children was involved in creating a new tool.
 Save the Children was actively supporting the project implementation team in the process of
selecting the relevant areas to focus, gathering data and through providing external expertise to
the final report.
 The Result of the Work and Further Steps
 The average grade assigned to the government of Georgia in the child rights area was 2.18 out
of possible 5.
 The areas such as child poverty and deinstitutionalization (overall score 1), prevention and
family support services (overall score: 1.5) and institutionalized childcare system in Georgia
(overall score 1.5) are the most overlooked fields in child rights protection field.
 The advocacy strategy will be developed by the Coalition to address the challenges revealed by
the Report Card 2019.
 To raise public awareness on the issue, series of infographics with the findings of the Report
were developed and shared.
 The findings of the Report Card were also imbedded in the communication strategy developed
under a new project that aims at inclusion of issue of child rights in the election agendas of the
political parties.
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5. Advocacy efforts of SC Georgia CO to influence the GoG to undertake
commitments with respect to children’s rights (UNCRC30 celebration)
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Selecting the key
stakeholder
• The Human Rights
Secretariat under the
Prime Minister’s Office
of Georgia
• The Prime Minister of
Georgia
• The Ministers of
Education and
Healthcare
• The heads of the
relevant Parliamentary
Committees
Issuing Advocacy
Letters
• Alongside with the
Human Rights
Secretariat and the
Prime Minister, letters
were drafted for the
Ministries of
Healthcare, Education
and the relevant
Parliamentary
Committees
Meetings with the
Stakeholders
• Follow-up meetings
with the stakeholders

6. Commitment 1: Introduction of a Referral Mechanism for
children between 7 to 18 years of age and provision of
relevant services to beneficiaries
 The urgency of the matter and steps taken to improve the situation
 Up until September 2020, the children above the age of 12 demonstrating antisocial behavior were
referred to Samtredia (West Georgia) boarding school.
 The Ombudsman’s reports revealed that the Facility didn’t offer adequate environment/conditions
for rehabilitation and development. There was no effective referral system for juveniles that could
ensure results-oriented complex approach to them, their resocialization and separating them from
illicit activities.
 Starting from September 2020 a new referral mechanism was introduced. The mechanism consists
of two institutions:
 Child Referral Centre responsible for identification, referral and resocialization of those juveniles
who have not committed a crime yet but have difficult behaviour or are inclined to such a
behaviour; in addition, the Centre is entrusted to continue to create referral mechanisms for
children who committed a criminal action; such children will become beneficiaries of relevant
programmes and services respectively.
 Child referral facilities (the semi-closed family-type institutions under the Ministry of Healthcare)
for children in between the ages of 10-18. Said facilities are still to be established.
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7. Commitment 2: Undertake measures to increase the access
of children with disabilities to inclusive education
 The urgency of the matter and steps taken to improve the situation;
 Notwithstanding the steps taken by GoG in the area of IE system strengthening, the challenges
remain: the schools are not equipped to cater to the needs of children with various types of
disabilities; the parents and teachers often refuse to acknowledge the special educational needs of
the children and do not refer them for professional evaluation; the amount of psychologists and
special pedagogues at schools remains scarce; the process of transformation of special schools
into resource hubs is hampered by COVID-19 and lack of funding.
 From 2088 public schools of Georgia, more than 9249 Special Education Need (SEN) students
have access to inclusive education in 1423 public schools;
 1919 special teachers are employed in 1382 public schools to support SEN students at general
education level;
 All new public school buildings are accessible for children with different disabilities (896
schools have ramps)
 In compliance to the recommendation of specialists (teachers, special teachers,
multidisciplinary team members), SEN students are provided with individual assistants,
psychologists, occupation therapists, speech therapists, mobility and orientation specialists,
sign language specialist (lack of funding at schools)
 Additional support service - 13 integrated classes are available in public schools for autistic
children and hearing-impaired children, 1 integrated class is available in the clinic for children
suffering from leukemia;
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8. Commitment 3: Provision of access to mandatory
education for all out-of-school children within the next 5
years
 Urgency of the matter and the steps taken to improve the situation:
 Lack of official data regarding the amount of out-of-school children and the reasons for
leaving the schools;
 High levels of poverty, which encourages families to engage children in child labor at the
expense of their education;
 Lack of monitoring mechanisms enabling schools to report incidents of drop-out.
 Low quality of general education in Georgia (PISA data 2018), which leaves the children
leaving the schools after the 9th grade, without the skills and knowledge necessary for
successful transition to labor market;
 As a commitment, it was decided to streamline the program “second chance in
education – a transition program from day care center to public schools” for street
children.
 A research designed to assess the exact amount of out-of-school children and the
grounds on which they dropped out from the education system is being conducted. The
research will be finalized by the end of the year.
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9. Challenges and Lessons learned
 Challenges:
 Absence of child-rights based budget allocations – lack of strategic and holistic vision regarding
the challenges in child rights area; As a result, the budgetary allocations and existing programmes
are fragmented, inefficient and often overlook the root causes of the problems;
 As a result, the Government is often dependent on resources offered by CSOs – inefficiently
allocated budget restricts them from incorporating the tools offered by organizations in their
programmatic approaches.
 Fragmented coordination among the Ministries and agencies entrusted with promoting the child
rights;
 Lack of strong watchdog organizations in child rights area – most of the activities undertaken by
watchdog organizations are fragmented and concentrate on achieving short-term (albeit, often
groundbreaking) achievements.
 Lessons learned:
 Vital importance of mechanisms assessing the performance of the government across all sectors
of child rights field (holistic approach);
 Need for introducing the Public Investment in Children approach to assess and advocate for more
efficient spending;
 The need of strong cooperation of SC with local watchdog organizations and Coalition
 Progress achieved in areas with larger involvement of CSOs is several times higher than in other
fields.
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