Caucasus 16 Days 2001 Concluding Conference

Sponsored by the Government of

‘VIOLENCE IN THE HOME & VIOLENCE IN SOCIETY’

The Institute of Physiology, 14 Gotua St.

at 10:15 – 17:30 on Tuesday 11th December 2001

Conference Registration 10:15

The Canadian Government is sponsoring the CAUCASUS 16 DAYS concluding conference that is being held on Tuesday 11th December in Tbilisi. The conference will be chaired by Tiemuraz Lomsadze, Deputy of the Public Defender of Georgia, and the theme is ‘Violence in the Home, Violence in Society’. Speakers include:

Teimuraz Lomsadze, Deputy of Public Defender of Georgia

Elene Tevdoradze, M.P., Chairperson of Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights,

Rusudan Beridze, Deputy Secretary of the National Security Council on Human Rights Issues,

Pida Ripley, Founder WomenAid International,

Manon Khachidze, Deputy Minister of Health, Labor and Social Affairs,

Nugzar Birkaia, President of the Chamber of Lawyers,

Alexander Nalbandov, Deputy Head of Service on Human Rights Issues, National Security Council of Georgia

Givi Lobjanidze, Vice-Rector of the National Police Academy

This support is part of a grant given to WomenAid International-Caucasus for the implementation of the first coordination of the global campaign, ‘16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence’ in the Caucasus. Members of the Caucasus 16 Days National Coordination Committees in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia organised many events, meetings and press articles and media programmes within the region. Over 500 organisations worked together to create the large regional calendar of events and activities promoting the elimination of violence against women.

The entire Caucasus 16 Days coordination required the voluntary commitment from many representatives of NGOs and the media. It is a tribute to their dedication that over 80 events in Georgia alone were organised to take place within the ‘16 Days’.

The murder of 16 Canadian female students over ten years ago, murdered because they were wanted to become engineers, triggered the creation of two global campaigns;

16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and the White Ribbon Campaign – a unique initiative founded by Canadian men determined to end men’s violence against women. Both these campaigns were introduced to Georgia last year by WomenAid International and this year have been extended through the South Caucasus. Some of the most famous men in Georgia, (Duta, Dato Evgenidze, Bakur Burduli, Kakhi Kavsadze, Rezo Gabriadze, Gia Bugadze, Kote Kubaneishvili and members of the Georgian Rugby Team, ‘Lelo’) have accepted WomenAid International’s invitation to be Georgian White Ribbon Ambassadors and promote elimination of violence against women.

The Canadian Government is supporting this project because it facilitates the active participation of civil society actors in three countries in transition and it is hoped that the Canadian support for the Caucasus 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence 2001, the first regional coordination of the campaign in the world, will greatly strengthen the emerging collaborative network against gender violence in the Caucasus.

WomenAid International is a humanitarian aid and development agency which also campaigns for women’s rights. WomenAid has been working in the CIS region, Central Asia and the Caucasus since 1994 and its CIS regional office is based in Tbilisi, Georgia. For further information please visit the WomenAid International website at www.womenaid.org

Further details of activities organized by NGO partners can be found on the specially created Caucasus 16 Days website: www.womenaid.org/16days

For further information please contact:

WomenAid International-Caucasus:

17 Khvichia St. Tbilisi 380060 Georgia

Tel/Fax: (995 32) 37 92 70;

Mobiles: (995 99) 10 28 65; (995 77) 41 15 60; (995 77) 41 20 81

Email: waigeo@access.sanet.ge

Prepared for Caucasus 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence 2001.