Georgia's Public Defender Abolishes Three Departments, Dismisses Seven Employees
By Messenger Staff
Friday, October 23, 2026
Georgia's Public Defender's Office has completed a reorganization that abolished the Gender Department, the Human Rights Education Department and the Strategic Litigation Department, resulting in seven employees being dismissed, First Deputy Public Defender Tamar Gvaramadze confirmed on October 22.
Gvaramadze told Netgazeti that responsibilities had been redistributed among other units and grouped by subject. The office said the reorganization followed an internal assessment that identified overlapping responsibilities and duplicated work, with the aim of improving coordination and strengthening human rights protection.
Under the new structure, criminal justice issues, including hate crimes, femicide, violence against women and domestic violence, will be handled by a single unit. The office also plans to strengthen oversight of women's rights, cooperation with Parliament, human rights education and monitoring of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The abolition of the Gender Department has drawn criticism from former Deputy Public Defender Ekaterine Skhiladze, who reported the planned change on October 15. She argued that gender issues require both integration across institutional activities and dedicated policies and mechanisms.
"Abolishing the department is not justified by anything, however lofty the stated goals may be. For me, this decision has no other explanation except that the Public Defender has fallen in step with state 'policy' and simply made gender disappear," Skhiladze wrote.
The decision comes amid broader concerns over gender-related policy in Georgia. In 2025, Parliament adopted legislative amendments removing the terms "gender" and "gender identity" from Georgian legislation.
The reorganization has also affected other employees. On October 2, Public Defender's Office employee Mako Arabuli announced that she had been dismissed after 11 years at the institution. She criticized what she described as a return to a system in which civil servants answer to political authorities rather than the public and the Constitution.
Public Defender Levan Ioseliani said the changes had affected multiple employees and described the dismissals as a normal consequence of structural reorganization. "A structural unit was abolished, and several people were dismissed because of that," he said, according to Publika.
The Public Defender's Office maintains that the new structure will improve efficiency and ensure more coordinated responses to human rights violations.
