COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

Forty-eighth session

SUMMARY RECORD OF THE 1316thMEETING*

Held at the Palais Wilson, Geneva,on Tuesday, 20 May 2008, at 10 a.m.

Chairperson: Ms. LEE

CONTENTS

CONSIDERATION OF REPORTS OF STATES PARTIES

Third periodic report of Georgia

* No summary record was prepared for the1315th meeting.

This record is subject to correction.

Corrections should be submitted in one of the working languages. They should be set forth in a memorandum and also incorporated in a copy of the record. They should be sent within one week of the date of this document to the Editing Unit, room E.4108, Palais des Nations, Geneva.

Any corrections to the record of the public meetings of the Committee at this session will be consolidated in a single corrigendum, to be issued shortly after the end of the session.

GE.08-42095 (EXT)

The meeting was called to order at 10.05 a.m.

CONSIDERATION OF REPORTS OF STATE PARTIES (agenda item 4)

Third periodic report of Georgia (CRC/C/GEO/3; CRC/C/GEO/Q/3 and Add.1)

1.At the invitation of the Chairperson, the delegation of Georgia took places at the Committee table.

2.Mr. GAGNIDZE (Georgia) said that Georgia had acceded to the Convention in 1994 and to the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography in 2005.

3.Georgia was endeavouring to promote democratic values and strengthen the rule of law, and a number of important measures on the education and protection of children had been adopted. For example, the Government had incorporated civics courses in school curricula nation-wide in order to foster the values of tolerance and democracy from a very early age.

4.In 2007 it had introduced the “Stay Safe” school programme with the aim of combating violence in schools. That programme, which had 21 subprogrammes, involved school administrations, teachers and pupils. Its implementation was monitored by an independent expert group consisting of psychologists, psychiatrists, school principals, teachers and social workers. Georgia had thus become one of the first countries to take part in the joint programme of the Council of Europe and the United Nations children’s Fund (UNICEF) to end violence in schools.

5.Despite Georgia’s rapid economic growth, some 11 per cent of schoolchildren still lived below the poverty line. At the end of 2007 approximately 2.5 million lari had been allocated to schools for the purchase of textbooks for 57,699 poor pupils. In addition, the Ministry of Education and Science had offered 61 works to every one of the country’s school libraries.

6.The Government accorded special attention to the integration of children of ethnic minorities and displaced children from the conflict regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Schools Partnership Programme, which covered schools enrolling ethnic-minority children, was designed to promote the integration of those children in Georgian society. The integration projects carried out in that context offered inter alia courses in Georgian language for Azeri and Armenian children and in Ossetian and Abkhaz for pupils from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as publishing textbooks in Ossetian and Abkhaz and awarding scholarships to pupils from South Ossetia.

7.In order to promote equal access to education the Government had decided in 2006 to give priority to integrative education for children with disabilities. Several projects had been undertaken to encourage the integration of such children in the school system (national awareness-raising campaigns, creation of multidisciplinary teams, establishment of preparatory schools, and early intervention programmes).

8.In 2004 the Government had introduced a national reform of the arrangements for the protection of children. Recognizing the adverse effects of placing children in institutions, it had established a system under which children were cared for in families. As a result, more than 3,600 children had emerged from institutions or neglect. The national reform was based on a number of programmes, such as the creation of teams of social workers throughout the country, the establishment of nurseries and day centres for mothers and their babies, the award of higher education scholarships, placement in foster families, personnel training, and the introduction of standards for children’s services.

9.The Government had formulated a National Plan of Action for children (2008-2011) which was designed to ensure children’s comprehensive development in a secure environment and which addressed mainly the problems of poverty, abuse and institutionalization.

10.Ms. TOMASHVILI (Georgia) said that the country’s rapid economic growth had enabled the Government to allocate considerable resources to the legal system and the promotion of human rights. Its action had been focussed principally on reform of the juvenile justice system to bring it into line with the Convention. Priority had been given in that field to promoting measures other that detention, with deprivation of liberty being used only as a last resort. The new juvenile justice system was intended to meet the specific needs of children in conflict with the law, with emphasis on their rehabilitation and social reintegration.

11.The Government was formulating with UNICEF support a draft strategy for juvenile justice and was going to initiate a two-year project on its “de-legalization” in Batumi and Kutaisi. It was collaborating closely with the Government of Estonia on the question of non-custodial supervision. The Ministry of Justice and the Georgian Orthodox Church had concluded an agreement under which the Church was participating in the non-custodial supervision regime which non-violent juvenile offenders could opt for.

12.Another important element of the reform was the draft plan of action against torture formulated by the Inter-institutional Coordination Council, composed of representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, which was shortly to be submitted to the President for adoption. One of the Plan’s aims was to improve the non-custodial supervision regime for juvenile offenders and encourage the use of non-custodial measures.

13.Where improvement of the conditions under which minors were held in detention was concerned, a new programme of secondary education had been established in 2007 in the prisons. Steps had also been taken to facilitate prisoners’ access to health care, including the establishment in 2007 of a prisoners’ insurance scheme. In 2007 spending on prison catering had increased by 247 per cent over 2006.

14.Mr. PURAS (Country Rapporteur) said that Georgia had made enormous progress over the past five years. It played an important role in the promotion of democracy at the regional level and was doing its utmost to secure the peaceful settlement of the ongoing conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

15.Georgia had to take up to major challenges if it was to modernize its society and ensure the application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international instruments. First, it should invest more in social, health and education policies and in modern infrastructure for the promotion and protection of children’s rights. Second, it would have to boost the confidence in each other of representatives civil society and representatives of the State. The Government was not furnishing sufficient support to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and did not involve them sufficiently in the formulation and implementation of national policies. Georgia would need NGOs if it was to move on from violence and discrimination to a culture of trust and tolerance.

16.If it followed the Committee’s recommendations, Georgia would avoid adopting ineffective measures such as lowering the age of criminal responsibility and underinvestment in grass-roots services for vulnerable families and children.

17.He asked what was the current status of the process of coordinating the application of the Convention in Georgia and which national body was responsible for promoting and protecting the rights of the child and coordinating the application of the Convention. He also wished to know what the mandate of that body was, what resources had been allocated to it, and how civil society was involved in decision-making at the national level.

18.He would welcome information on the progress made in implementing the National Plan of Action for children (2003-2007) and the National Plan of Action on the Protection of children and Their Placement in Open Environments for the periods 2005-2008 and 2008-2011. Did the latter Plan address all the fields covered by the Convention and what financial and human resources were allocated to it?

19.He would like to know how the Convention influenced the application of other international instruments such as the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and whether specific measures had been adopted on children’s rights and the juvenile justice system as part of the application of the Optional Protocol. Did the draft plan of action torture include provisions on the situation of children placed in institutions and on the gradual application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

20.He would welcome details of the zero-tolerance policy adopted by the Government, in particular whether it was consistent with the international children’s rights standards.

21.Ms. VUCKOVIC-SAHOVIC (Alternate Country Rapporteur) said that she was worried about the situation of internally displaced children and refugee children, although she had noted improvements in that area since the consideration of the second periodic report. She would like to have information about the implementation of the plans and strategies for the social reintegration of those children. She was aware that the Government had placed the emphasis on their return to their regions of origin, but until such return became possible they must be integrated in society. What action did Georgia plan to take in that regard?

22.She asked about the fate of children in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, noting that the Government had not managed to conduct a census in those two regions or to assess the situation prevailing there. She wished to know whether any information could be provided about the situation of those children and whether the Convention was really being applied in the two regions.

23.She asked for information about the situation of the Roma, for acts of violence against them had been reported in a report drawn up in the 1990s.

24.She noted with satisfaction that the definition of torture had been substantially amended following the visit of the Special Rapporteur on torture but would like to know the extent to which that definition applied to children.

25.Noting that in its general comment No. 10 on the rights of the child in the juvenile justice system the Committee had never put forward the idea of authorizing any Government to lower the age of criminal responsibility, she asked what the purpose of that measure was. The increase in the number of offences committed by juveniles ought to prompt the Government to identify the causes of such conduct rather than to adopt repressive measures.

26.Mr. KOTRANE asked whether the Government intended to ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and whether it was going to draft and adopt a general act on the rights of the child in order to give effect to the Committee’s earlier concluding observations on the fragmented nature of Georgia’s legislation.

27.Mr. ZERMATTEN asked for clarification concerning the arrangements for consulting children in divorce and separation proceedings, in accordance with article 12, paragraph 2, of the Convention, which provided that children should be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial or administrative proceedings affecting them. He would also like to know more about the fact that child victims of trafficking were accorded the status of victim only if they cooperated in the judicial proceedings.

28.Mr. PARFITT asked whether the Office of the Ombudsman for children had the necessary financial and human resources to discharge its mandate, whether it was accessible to all children throughout the country, and whether it could enter juvenile detention centres. He would also like to know about the progress made in bringing the Office into conformity with the Paris Principles and whether the Government took the recommendations made therein effectively into account.

29.The delegation might indicate whether the Government collaborated with civil society and NGOs and describe the way in which the Office of the Ombudsman for children coordinated the activities of the NGOs working with children. It would be useful to know whether any NGOs had been involved in the preparation of the State party’s periodic report.

30.Ms. KHATTAB noted that the Ministry of Justice’s budget for feeding and educating detained children was increasing and asked whether the juvenile detention centres were the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of the Interior. She would welcome more information about the role of the Ministry of Education and Science in the education of children in places of detention.

31.The delegation might indicate whether the Government had encountered any specific difficulties in publicizing the Convention, in particular in making the general public aware of the rights of vulnerable groups such as internally displaced persons, refugees and minorities. It would be useful to know how society perceived the rights of such groups and to have information about the situation of girls, in particular in certain sections of society in which their rights might no be respected.

32.She asked whether the Government was taking action to help minority groups and whether it planned to enrol displaced children in school and improve their housing conditions. She also wished to know whether it planned to revise the legislation on refugees to bring it into line with the international rules.

33.Ms. AIDOO noted that the State party’s periodic report stated that about 40 NGOs were active in Georgia and that a National Council on NGO Coordination had been set up in 2006. It was surprising that the report had been prepared exclusively by the various ministries concerned and that it said nothing about collaboration with NGOs.

34.Mr. CITARELLA asked about the legal status of the Convention in the State party, whether domestic legislation had been aligned with the Convention, and whether the provisions of the Convention had already been applied in any court decisions.

35.Mr. POLLAR asked about the importance given to children’s opinions, in the context of adoption for example. He also asked whether there still existed traditional or cultural practices which might obstruct children’s participation in decisions affecting them and, if so, whether action to put an end to such practices was planned.

36.The CHAIRPERSON said that she was concerned that numbers of children had not been declared at birth and asked whether such children had access to the health and education services. The delegation might say something about the children who had returned to live in the Gali district, in particular whether they could obtain education in Georgian and preserve their Georgian identity. It would also be useful to know whether young people enjoyed the right of assembly, whether the Government planned to set up a children’s parliament, and what arrangements it was introducing for taking children’s opinions into consideration, including the opinions of children from vulnerable groups.

37.Mr. FILALI asked about the ways in which the principle of the best interests of the child was applied in judicial, administrative and educational matters. He wished to know in particular whether any court decisions had been based on that principle, how many complaints had been lodged by children concerning infringement of their rights or interests, and whether the use of corporal punishment was tending to die out, both at school and in the home.

38.Ms. GOLUBIANI (Georgia) said that NGOs played an important role in the formulation of policies on the protection and education of children and in the provision of social assistance services.

39.Ms. TOMASHVILI (Georgia) said that NGOs were involved in specific projects, participated in the inter-institutional coordination bodies and monitoring arrangements, and collaborated in the formulation of certain action plans.

40.Some issues, such as domestic violence and trafficking in persons, were handled specifically by NGOs, which ran the shelters for victims and furnished victims with legal assistance when necessary.

41.A protocol had been signed between NGOs and the Ministry of the Interior with regard to the application of the law. A strict line of demarcation had been established between the functions of that Ministry, which was responsible for police custody cells, and those of the Ministry of Justice, which was responsible for supervising prisons. That dual system made it easier to detect any violations of the rights of detainees.

42.The new Code of Criminal Procedure provided that the Office of the Procurator-General could not open an investigation until a formal information had been laid before it. It was often an NGO which provided the material of such informations or lodged complaints.

43.Mr. MESKHORADZE (Georgia) said that, at the initiative of the Ministry of Justice, birth registration offices of the Civil Registry Agency, staffed by qualified personnel, had been established in all the country’s administrative subdivisions. In addition, the registration procedures had been simplified in 2008, facilitating the declaration of previously unregistered children. The number of unregistered persons had moreover declined considerably since the period covered by the preceding report.

44.Ms. SHUKAKIDZE (Georgia) said that that big step forward was due in part to the fact that the civil registry personnel made regular visits to schools and child protection institutions to registerchildren and to the political will of the Government, which wanted all children to be known to the civil registry service by the end of 2008. A joint project being implemented with UNICEF and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) should make it possible to attain that target: it provided for teams to tour the country so as to reach all the communities and ensure that the children of minority groups were also declared at birth.

45.In addition, a database was to be created in order to produce statistics on the country’s approximate total of 645,000 schoolchildren. When it submitted its next periodic report the Government ought to be able to provide the Committee with disaggregated data on the school population, including the numbers of dropouts and the reasons for dropping out, and the repetition rates.

46.Ms. TOMASHVILI (Georgia) said that Georgia had ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and had requested the Ombudsman already in office – whose work had made a substantial contribution to the decline in the number of cases of torture – to perform the functions of the national mechanism responsible for making the regular prison visits required under the Optional Protocol. The only places where the application of the Convention against Torture was encountering problems were the conflict zones of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

47.Other bodies had already been made responsible for preventing acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, such as the Inter-Institutional Coordination Council composed of representatives of the Ministries of Justice, the Interior, and Labour, Health and Social Affairs, the Office of the Procurator-General, the Ombudsman’s Office, Human Rights Watch, OHCHR and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as independent experts and others. The Ministry of the Interior also had a unit responsible for ensuring respect for the human rights of all persons placed in detention, children as well as adults, and for notifying the Office of the Procurator-General of allegations of abuse or clinical signs of torture or maltreatment. Any person placed in pre-trial detention must be immediately examined by a doctor to make sure that he or she had not been subjected to acts of torture or other maltreatment. The Office of the Procurator-General was the only body empowered to initiate judicial proceedings in cases of alleged torture or maltreatment.

48.Mr. FILALI asked whether torture victims had access to remedies in cases in which the Procurator-General did not call for an investigation to be opened.

49.The CHAIRPERSON noted that there were several mechanisms charged with preventing torture and maltreatment and asked whether there was a body responsible for coordinating the activities of the various monitoring mechanisms.

50.Ms. TOMASHVILI (Georgia) said that the Inter-Institutional Coordination Council was the body responsible for ensuring the proper functioning of the public torture-prevention and victim-protection agencies. She would furnish the Committee with additional written information on the operation of the protection system which Georgia had set up in that connection.

51.Up until 2005 the Procurator-General had been empowered to request the opening of an investigation as soon as he considered that the information put before him warranted such action. That was therefore a discretionary power. Following the amendment of the Code of Criminal Procedure in 2005 he was now required to open an investigation regardless of his opinion concerning the facts brought to his attention. All the evidence must be set down in a case file, and a registration number was automatically assigned to every criminal case.

52.Mr. PARFITT asked whether the State party had envisaged the possibility of creating an independent human rights commission in order to enable persons who considered that their human rights had been infringed by members of the forces of law and order to make representations to a body independent of the Office of the Procurator-General and the police itself.

53.Ms. TOMASHVILI (Georgia) said that the police could request the opening of an investigation in respect of certain offences but only the Procurator-General could do so when the offences concerned acts of torture or maltreatment. It should also be noted that NGOs could also carry out investigations and bring matters to the attention of the Procurator-General or the police, depending on the case, when they had information warranting the initiation of proceedings.

54.Mr. KOTRANE asked whether, in actual fact, the children’s Rights Centre and the Ombudsman’s Office had already received any complaints from children reporting infringements of the rights established in the Convention and what efforts the State party had made to develop the Centre’s activities in the country’s various regions. The delegation might confirm the accuracy or inaccuracy of the information received by the Committee to the effect that the age of criminal responsibility was to be lowered to 12 years from 1 July 2008.

55.Ms. TOMASHVILI (Georgia) said that every six months the Ombudsman was required to submit a report to Parliament, which was published. The Ministry of the Interior and the Office of the Procurator-General thus became aware of the report’s content at that time and regularly requested the opening of investigations if violations had been committed.

56.The Ombudsman was also empowered to enter any place of detention in order to inspect it - or to designate someone to do so in his place – and to report his findings to Parliament, which was fully empowered to decide on the action to be taken in the cases brought to its attention by the Ombudsman; the Executive could do nothing to influence such decisions.

57.Ms. GOLUBIANI (Georgia) said that the assistance provided by UNICEF had been valuable with regard to both technical and material matters.

58.Several training programmes on the principles embodied in the Convention had been formulated for target groups such as judges and teachers, and the Convention had been included in the civics curriculum in schools. In addition, special training had been dispensed in the child protection institutions, both for their directors and for their inmates. Social workers and NGOs had also contributed to that work by going out to meet people in the field.

59.The European Union had organized a three-day training course in Georgia, taught by judges, on the reform of the child protection institutions in the light of the principles of the Convention.

60.The CHAIRPERSON asked whether the provisions of the Convention were applied directly by the courts.

61.Ms. MIKHELIDZE (Georgia) said that an amendment had been incorporated in the Code of Criminal Procedure providing that only judges, procurators and investigators who had undergone special training in pedagogy and psychology had competence to handle criminal cases involving minors. The institutions responsible for the training of judges were the Office of the Procurator-General and the Higher School for Magistrates. That training, conducted in close collaboration with UNICEF, was a result of the reform of the juvenile justice system; from September 2008 it would be given to 160 juvenile judges.

62.The provisions of the Convention took precedence over domestic law. Georgia’s Constitution provided that international treaties occupied third place in the hierarchy of the judicial system, after the Constitution itself and the Constitutional Agreement between the State and the Georgian Orthodox Church.

63.Mr. PARFITT asked whether the delegation could give some examples of legal actions actually considered by the Supreme Court concerning discrepancies between domestic legislation and the provisions of the international treaties ratified by Georgia.

64.Ms. TOMASHVILI (Georgia) said that Georgia had adopted legislation providing that when the European Court of Human Rights found in favour of a complaint lodged by a Georgian citizen and specified a certain amount of compensation, that compensation was paid by the Ministry of Justice. Georgia was preparing to amend its legislation to make that procedure equally applicable to decisions of the Human Rights Committee. Furthermore, a number of provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure had been amended in the light of decisions of the Human Rights Committee and the European Court of Human Rights.

65.Mr. PURAS (Country Rapporteur) noted that Georgia’s health system had been collapsing over the past two decades and commended the Government on its efforts to establish a new rational and efficient health system based on a public-private partnership. However, the Committee would welcome reassurance that vulnerable groups, such as families, children and the poor, were not being sacrificed, and it would like to know how the State ensured that mother and child health services received priority. It also needed to know whether the State party had adopted a policy on mental health, more particularly the mental health of children, which addressed prevention, primary health care, and outpatient and inpatient hospital treatment. Since Georgia did not appear to have any psychiatric hospital services catering specifically for children, he would welcome information about any projects which the State party had in that area. Old-fashioned terms such as “oligophreny”, “mental retardation” and “cretinism” were to be found in the State party’s replies to the list of questions (CRC/C/GEO/Q/3/Add.1). Georgia might benefit greatly from cooperation with NGOs which were more advanced in the field of psychiatry.

66.Ms. VUCKOVIC-SAHOVIC (Alternate Country Rapporteur) asked whether the State party had taken account of the recommendations contained in the Study on Violence against children and was planning to take action to combat violence against children and indeed violence between children, which was widespread in Georgia, and to investigate the causes of violent behaviour by children, for it had been established that more than 90 per cent of the children who committed acts of violence had themselves been subjected to violence. The Committee had adopted a general comment on corporal punishment and it would like to know whether the State party, which had already banned corporal punishment in schools, was planning to impose a similar ban on violence in the family.

67. Mr. KRAPPMANN asked for some explanation of what seemed to him to be a deterioration in the quality of pre-school education. Pre-school institutions appeared to have more places than pupils; an explanation of the reasons for that situation would be welcome. He also asked how much pre-school education cost and how the quality of the education was monitored. Was the increase in the number of private pre-school institutions a reaction to the poor quality of the education offered in public institutions?

68.He asked for details of the integration of refugee children: whether all the children arriving from other countries, in particular Chechnya, enjoyed all the rights embodied in the Convention, especially children seeking asylum who did not obtain refugee status but could not be sent back to their countries for humanitarian reasons. He needed details of the provisions of Georgia’s refugee legislation applicable to those children. Many Chechen refugees were living in the Pankisi valley, where the development and education situation was rather bad. Not all the children went to school, and acts of violence against children and marriages of underage girls were reported. The delegation might indicate who protected those children and what the State party planned to do to improve the situation.

69.Many children and adults displaced within their own country were living on the margins of society in collective centres, often isolated and in poor circumstances. Those centres should be closed down. He wished to know what would become of the inmates if the centres were privatized, for that kind of measure usually led to increased homelessness.

70.Despite Georgia’s economic growth, poverty continued to increase, affecting in particular large single-income families. He would welcome information about the steps taken by the State party to support such families and stressed that financial measures were effective only when combined with other measures dealing inter alia with health, food, accommodation, leisure and education. Had the State party established in the kindergartens, schools and communities programmes targeted on children affected by extreme poverty?

71.Mr. KOTRANE, referring to the question raised by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2006 concerning the persistence of stereotypes in school curricula which caused women to limit themselves to the traditionally female occupations, asked for additional information about the place of girls and boys in society and whether there was any gender-equality education. He also wished to know why girls committed many fewer offences than boys. He was astounded at the scant number of convictions in 2005 in relation to the high number of offences committed in that year.

72.Ms. AIDOO said that the Committee did not have full information on the child health system, on activities in the area of early childhood development, such as promotion of breastfeeding, or on the early stimulation of young children and early learning. She was moreover astonished at the high rate of neonatal mortality and asked what the reasons for it were. She noted that neonatal mortality was commoner in rural areas than in the towns and higher among minorities such as Azeris.

73.There was also an enormous gap between rural and urban areas in terms of pre-school education; the delegation might indicate what the State party was doing to reduce that gap

74.She also asked what treatment and preventive health services were available for teenagers, in particular with regard to reproductive health education, and whether young people had access to assistance and a confidential ear in such matters. Teenagers seemed not to be able to take decisions affecting them as patients without information being passed on to their parents or legal representatives; that might cause difficulties for the teenagers in question. She would welcome an explanation of the high teenage pregnancy rate and the increased number of abortions among girls in the 15-19 age group.

75.It would also be useful to know the current status of the study on child poverty conducted in collaboration with UNICEF. If it had been completed, the delegation might state whether it was being used by the Government in its poverty reduction programme and whether that programme gave priority to children.

76.Ms. KHATTAB asked whether the State party planned to allocate increased resources to education in breastfeeding. She also wished to know whether Georgia envisaged ratifying the Maternity Protection Convention (No. 183) of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

77.With respect to the prohibition of corporal punishment in schools, she would like to know how the State party ensured that the law was respected. She would also welcome additional information on the progress made by the State party since the submission of its second periodic report in combating child labour and implementing the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (No. 182) and the Minimum Age Convention (No. 138). It would be useful to know whether Georgia participated in the ILO International Programme on the Abolition of Child Labour (IPEC) and what role was played by NGOs in that regard. The number of working children in Georgia was clearly higher than the average percentage for countries in transition. In Georgia, as in other countries, some people considered that poor children could improve their standard of living by working and that therefore child labour should not be abolished. However, it must be stressed that the more time children spent working, the less they spent in school.

78.She welcomed the creation of the unit to combat trafficking in persons but wondered whether the State party should not establish a multisectoral unit to coordinate the work of the various ministries and other entities working to combat the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children, such as the migration, police, education and justice eservices, the media and NGOs. As there was no mention in the report of the existence of a system for collecting data on victims or a complaints mechanism, she would like to know whether campaigns were carried out for victims and the general public to raise their awareness of the consequences of the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children and whether there were any rehabilitation services for victims and training and capacity-building programmes for professionals working that field.

79.The delegation might also indicate whether the State party had any statistics on the phenomenon of street children and whether measures were in place to protect them against sexual exploitation and trafficking. It might also indicate whether Georgia had a policy on the rehabilitation and reintegration of street children, whether services had been established to target street children specifically and systematically, and whether support was furnished to NGOs working with street children. Lastly, the Committee needed to know what was being done to protect children against drug use.

The meeting rose at 1.05 p.m.

- - - - -