Lack of safety for ethnic minority girls in Georgia

In December of 2015, a 14-year old, ethnically Azerbaijani girl was abducted from her village in Sagarejo district. She was then locked with a 24-year old man, who used force and raped her several times in one night. The day after, the girl was taken back home by her relatives. According to REGinfo, the girl told everything to her family, who informed the police. Sagarejo police launched an investigation under the Article 140 of the Criminal Code of Georgia, which implies "sexual intercourse or any other act of sexual nature with a person who has not attained the age of 16 years" and envisages imprisonment for a term of seven to nine years.

According to the documents, the perpetrator went into hiding and was never arrested. There were no cases launched against the people who abducted the girl.

The girl didn't go to school for 2 years. In 2017, she started attending school in a neighboring village.

According to REGinfo, Human Rights Center got involved in the case and asked the officials to reclassify the case under the Article 137, D sub-clause, which signifies rape of a minor and is punished by imprisonment for a term of ten to thirteen years. During the investigation, gender-based violence was not taken into account either.

The victim of violence was questioned in court in December of 2018, where she recounted in detail how she was abducted and raped three times in one night.

On April 4, 2019, the girl, who was walking to school, was yet again abducted by the perpetrator, who was officially wanted. The girl was raped again that day.

On June 9, Baia Pataraia, a well-known Georgian human rights defender and the Executive Director of Union "Sapari," a leading women's rights organization in Georgia, posted a video online, where she spoke about the girl, who was abducted and raped at the age of 14.

She demanded action from the appropriate officials. She asked Giorgi Gakharia, the Minister of Internal Affairs, to arrest the rapist and to Davit Sergeenko, Georgia's Minister of Health, Labor, and Social Affairs, to take the girl from the perpetrator's house and provide her with the necessary psychological support.

Yesterday, MIA announced that the perpetrator was arrested, now it remains to be seen how the proceedings will be carried out and if the justice will be served.

In her video, Pataraia mentioned that the state was unwilling to protect the girl because she was a representative of an ethnic minority. Indeed, the cases as such are prevalent in the Muslim-majority regions of Georgia, and the government is often inadequate in taking into account the needs of this population, especially of young Muslim girls. Pataraia asked others to support the message by using hashtag #ForGirls.

Even though Pataraia's intentions might be noble, the narrative has the danger of slipping into what's called a "savior complex." Usually observed between the relations of global North-South, it can also be prevalent within a single country. Often, what the complex implies, in this case, is when upper class, privileged women feel obliged to "liberate" their middle and lower class sisters. In Georgia's case, these women are most often Muslim (who only make up 10.7% of Georgia's population). However, Pataraia encouraged the women in the Georgian Muslim community to also speak about the issues, thus heartening the members of the community to speak for themselves.

In one of the videos under the #ForGirls campaign, Kamilla Mamedova spoke about the stereotype that the government uses not to protect Muslim girls. "They [the Government] put the violence under the wraps of 'tradition' of the community, which simply doesn't exist," says Mamedova.

"I'm an ethnic Azerbaijani woman living in the community, where there are the most ethnic Azerbaijanis, and I want to tell you that the government is helping reinforce these stereotypes. There are numerous laws that are supposed to protect us, but the people working in the structures that have to enforce them, don't believe in them. They support the spread of violence. Let's raise our voices for girls," concludes Mamedova.

A few days ago, a 16-year-old girl in Lagodekhi (also Kakheti district) gave birth after she felt sick while at school. The girl didn't know she was pregnant. She says that a 40-year-old man raped her several times. Unfortunately, such cases are a part of the everyday lives of the ethnic minorities in Georgia.

Being a girl in a low-income rural family in Georgia is hard enough; being a representative of an ethnic minority adds another layer of discrimination to the systematic violence against girls. Maybe covering the issue in the wraps of "tradition" is easy for the government, since interfering in the affairs of the community would be seen as offending their traditions. But, in reality, the issue lies within the inadequacy of the governing bodies; they aren't sensitive towards the problems of minorities. The needs of these girls have to be accommodated within the law and its enforcement, otherwise, they will always remain as the most vulnerable group. The government enables the widespread violence daily, with being complicit and not executing its power to arrest and bring the perpetrators to justice.