The Parliament of Georgia adopts the Law on Sexual Harassment
By Inga Kakulia
Monday, May 6
On March 3rd the long and laborious work of the Gender Council brought about some tangible results. Since February 19th, when Parliament of Georgia supported changes to the law on all forms of discrimination, including sexual harassment the Council has been working towards bringing the change in this regard and creating a regulated framework for the people experiencing sexual harassment.
Discussion on this topic within the Parliament began on December 19th of 2018, when the Chairman of the Gender Equality Council, Tamar Chugoshvili, presented the package of legislative amendments for the regulation of sexual harassment. The package of legislative amendments was prepared by the Gender Equality Council with the support of USAID / PROLOG. The adopted law makes the act of sexual harassment punishable with a fine of 300 GEL. If such action is committed within one year after the imposition of administrative penalty, a person shall be charged a fine of 500 GEL or compulsory correctional works for a period of one month.
Sexual harassment and violence against women are two of the prevailing issues in the Georgian Society. While it would be wrong to ignore all the changes and progress made in the general attitudes in recent years, it is evident that a lot needs to be done on a legal level to ensure that sexual harassment becomes punishable by the law and the victims of sexual harassment feel protected by the constitution as well as the governmental establishments.
The 2017 research conducted by the UN Women showed that compared to the 2009 Gender attitudes were less conservative; Men and women in the younger generation showed more non-discriminatory attitudes. According to the same research, there has been a decrease in the rate of women who stayed with violent husbands because they believed the violence to be normal; In addition to that, there has been a significant increase in the percentage of women who have experienced intimate partner violence who have reported it to the police.
The amendments will further help victims of sexual harassment to seek action.
Following the initiative proposed by the Gender Council, the amendment was introduced into the following laws - Labor Code, the Law on Public Defender, Code of Administrative Offenses and Civil Procedure Code.
The draft law also outlines the definition of sexual harassment, according to which any unwanted action of sexual nature aimed at creating a terrifying, hostile, humiliating or offensive environment and is meant to damage a person’s dignity will be classified as sexual harassment.
The more specific definition of sexual behavior has also been introduced.
"Sexual behavior involves the pronunciation of and/or addressing someone with sexually explicit phrases; exposure of genitalia and/or other non-verbal physical behavior of sexual nature."
In addition, according to the draft law, Article 166 was added to the "Code of Administrative Offenses of Georgia". This article provides the aggravating circumstances and the appropriate sanctions against the predator. The amendment also covers the articles based on which the representatives of the relevant bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs will have the opportunity to draw up the relevant protocol for the person who committed sexual harassment, and the final decision on the imposition of sanctions will be made by the court.
The definition of sexual harassment is also included in the Code of Labor. In addition, paragraph 4 of Article II of the Labor Code will be replaced and sexual harassment, directly or indirectly harassing a person who aims to damage a person's dignity and to create a terrifying, hostile, humiliating, degrading or insulting environment for the person as well as creating conditions that directly or indirectly causes unfair circumstances for the victim of sexual harassment will be deemed discriminatory.
Also, with the package of the proposed amendments, the appeal to the court is extended to 1 year. The authors of the draft law note that the three-month period for appearing in court is not long enough to prepare the case materials.
In addition, according to the draft law, the Public Defender's mandate is increased and Ombudsman shall request the implementation of the recommendation if the organization has not shared or has not responded to its recommendation. At the same time, the physical and juridical person will be obligated to provide the Public Defender with all the documents and the required materials necessary for inspection within 10 days.
The involvement of non-governmental organizations has been crucial to bringing about the change. One of such organizations is “Sapari”, which has been one of the frontrunners in this process. Their social media campaign on Facebook against sexual harassment titled “What happened on the streets” aimed at raising awareness about sexual harassment and contributed to the increase the visibility also of hidden forms of violence against women.
According to the policy brief - “Sexual Harassment Beyond Legal Regulation in Georgia”, prepared by, Baia Pataraia, the director of the women’s organization “Sapari”, the “Rapid Assessment of Sexual Harassment in Metro Rail of Tbilisi, Georgia”1 poll, conducted in 2014, demonstrated that 45% of female respondents have experienced some form of sexual harassment in the Tbilisi metro during the last 6 months prior to the conduct of the opinion poll. However, none of the victims has asked the police for help, let alone press charges. Only a relatively small number of women acknowledged having been victims of sexual harassment at some point. It should be highlighted that even if women had reported sexual assaults to the police, the latter would not have been able to take legal actions, as this matter is simply not regulated under the Administrative Offenses Code of Georgia.
Violence against women still prevails as one of the most prominent issues in the Georgian Society. But as general attitudes are changing, the new law is a step taken in the right direction to help the progress to continue.