The human rights situation in Georgia has improved in the last decade with increases in advocacy and lobbying, and diversification seen in the role civil society now plays as a ‘watchdog’ to defends human rights. In spite of these gains the process of translating newly adopted policies and laws into practice has been slow going and the national Public Defender recently—along with several international organizations and civil society authorities—identified outstanding challenges that serve as hurdles to Georgia further levelling up its human rights standards. The primary issues being fine-tuned are advocating for the adoption of a strong culture of human rights at all levels of society, providing civil servants with rights-related education and professional training, and boosting the sustainability of programmes and capacities of CSOs/NGOs staff. Solutions to these challenges have the potential to open up new revenue streams, improve access to financing, positively impact human rights protections beyond the short-term, and empower local agents of change (organizational or individual) to make state institutions more accountable to people.

The Human Rights for All Joint Programme is designed to address prevailing human rights challenges in and offer comprehensive responses. Stakeholders collaborate on integrated and contextually relevant actions that improve the protection of the rights of people in vulnerable situations (e.g. minorities or people living with disabilities), as well as safeguarding privacy, and freedom of expression and information. By working with a range of partners at all levels of society Joint Programme support has the potential to improve the functioning of institutions and ensure the spread of relevant knowledge among all stakeholders, thereby resulting in comprehensive regulatory and policy frameworks that adequately protect duty bearers and rights holders.

Strategic framework and theory of change

To reach the objective of seeing to it that citizens of Georgia, primarily those in vulnerable situations, enjoy better

protection of their human rights projects implemented move the needle under one of five specific objectives:

• 1 - Relevant public bodies (duty-bearers) develop, implement and monitor national human rights policy and related frameworks
• 2 - Law-enforcement and human rights protection bodies effectively implement their duties related to policymaking and enforcement with due oversight and transparency
• 3 - Human rights of minority groups and people in vulnerable situations are recognized in law and protected in practice
• 4 - Local authorities more effectively protect human rights of all citizens, primarily those in vulnerable situations and minority groups
• 5 - Citizens are informed on, favourable to and supportive of human rights for all and efforts to protect them

Progress under these five objective areas will ultimately create an enabling environment for human rights protection that not only advocates for, but reflects human rights in national laws and policies. It helps to shape legal and governance policy making measures at national and local levels, streamlining human rights based approaches and bringing them in line to be compliant with international standards.