Workshop for Georgian Media by UNHCR
By Mariam Chanishvili
Thursday, December 27
UNHCR Regional Regional Representation in the South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) organized a workshop for Georgian Media.
The workshop took place in Kakheti at Lopota Lake Resort on December 17-19.
Various topics about including refugees, IDPs, asylum-seekers and stateless persons living in Georgia, were discussed within the frames of the workshop.
Johannes van der Klaauw, UNHCR Regional Representative welcomed the media representatives, while the journalists had a chance to discuss various issues and ask questions regarding the latest and relevant topics.
The media representatives received information on the #IBelong Campaign, which was launched in November 2014.
Together with civil society and other UN Agencies, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) aims to end statelessness by 2024 by resolving existing statelessness, preventing new cases from emerging and better identifying and protecting stateless populations.
States are encouraged to take various actions in order to achieve the goals of the campaign, including to ensure that no child is born stateless, to prevent denial, loss or deprivation of nationality on discriminatory grounds, to resolve existing major situations of statelessness, to grant protection status to stateless migrants and facilitate their naturalization, etc.
Tamta Zaalishvili, Head of Quality Control and Training Unit, Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia overviewed the asylum system in Georgia, current trends and developments.
Levan Sigua, Head of IDP Unit, Department of IDPs and Eco-Migrants, Ministry of Internally Displaced persons from Occupied Territories, Labour, Health and Social Issues of Georgia discussed durable solutions for IDPs and government policies towards displacement in Georgia.
UNHCR established its presence in Georgia in 1993, to provide emergency humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had fled armed conflict in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 1992-93 and then again after the 2008 war.
Since then, UNHCR Georgia has been operational in protecting the rights of persons of concern – asylum-seekers, refugees, the internally displaced and stateless persons - and has been gradually extending its program to address their needs.
