Children’s rights in Georgia – an ignored issue

The Ministry of Internal Affairs made an arrest on charges of child exploitation in the capital of Adjara region, Batumi. Mother and aunt of four children repeatedly forced them to beg for money in the streets for the past year, using physical violence and psychological pressure on them.

The offense envisages imprisonment from 14 to 17 years. The youngest of the four children was 6, the oldest being 12. The mother and aunt used all the money gathered from exploiting the children, leaving nothing to them.

Police gathered numerous evidence proving the offense during the secret investigative actions, ordered by the judge. For now, the children are placed in the State Care Service centers. The police also issued restraining orders for other members of the family.

This single case is just one of the many that happens on a daily all across Georgia. Even with a naked eye it’s easy to see how the rights of children begging for money in the streets is being violated.

With the death of a 16-year-old worker on a construction site, the systematic violence against workers and children came under spotlight once again, but not for long, because while our society tends to highlight such tragic cases, itdoes little to nothing to tackle the system that exploits and kills young people daily.

This year marks 30 years from the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) – an international agreement on childhood. With the adoption of CRC, the world leaders made a historic commitment to the world’s children. According to The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), CRC “has become the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history and has helped transform children’s lives around the world”.

In the recent years, the rights of children in Georgia have improved significantly, but there needs to be more steps taken in order to guarantee that every child gets equal protection in Georgia.

Georgia has ratified all key international conventions concerning child labor, however the issue of their implementation and enforcement clearly remains as a major issue.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor study of 2015, there is evidence that children in Georgia are engaged in child labor in agriculture and“in the worst forms of child labor, including in forced begging” (see the table).

Last month, during the International Children’s Day, the Public Defender of Georgia, Nino Lomjaria, issued a statement, saying that the steps undertaken by the state toward promoting rights of the child are insufficient. The Ombudsman particularly underlines the protection of children from all forms of violence.

According to her, “the phenomenon of violence must first be overcome in its small and early manifestations. This is the basic principle of preventing violence.”

According to another study from 2018, conducted by UNICEF, children who beg for money in the streets, “stay and move together in groups or clusters in order to protect each other, to find places to spend the night, to create spaces for leisure and entertainment, to cultivate friendship, and to cooperate in economic activities like petty trading, street begging and petty crime.”

According to the study, some children accompany their parents in begging and petty trading of different sorts. Some of these children portrayed these activities as involuntary and forced by parents, whereas others expressed a strong sense of obligation towards their parents or relatives and felt a duty to contribute.

It is clear that the efforts of the government, who is obliged to protect the most vulnerable, is not enough,as children, as young as 6, are forced to beg for money in the streets and the youth is being killed at construction sites, with no one giving them a helping hand.