Poll: 47% of Georgians are in favour of protecting LGBT rights

JAMnews

Tbilisi

LGBT rights in Georgia

The Office of the Council of Europe in Georgia has published the results of a study on minorities conducted in 2018-2021, according to which 47% of the reposndents considers it important to protect the rights of LGBTQ people.

The study is entitled “Hate Crimes, Hate Speech and Discrimination in Georgia: Knowledge and Attitudes” and it assesses changes in society’s attitudes towards diversity over the past three years.

The main results of the study are as follows:

● In 2018, according to the same survey, the protection of the rights of the LGBT community was considered important only by 33% of the respodents, but in 2021 the number increased to 47%.

● Compared to 2018, society is more aware and more understanding of the rights of all other minorities.

● The level of awareness and positive attitude towards diversity in Georgian society also increased between 2018 and 2021.

The survey also examined attitudes towards specific minority groups:

● According to this indicator, tolerance towards LGBT people has increased by 10% since 2018.

● Respondents were also asked who they would not like to see next door. The data show that the share of the population that would not like to be in the neighborhood of the LGBT community has decreased by 7%.

● Positive attitude towards diversity increased from 56% to 70%.

● Ethnic diversity data shows a 12% increase in positive sentiment to 68%.

The study also asked questions about certain groups and how often hate speech is used against them in Georgia.

The data shows that, according to public opinion, members of the LGBTQ community most often become the target of hate speech.

According to the respondents, they are also most often victims of hate crimes in Georgia. In general, the data in this respect did not change significantly.

“Although society’s attitudes towards diversity are becoming more and more positive, awareness of Georgian legislation against discrimination, hate crimes and hate speech remains virtually unchanged. Awareness and views on response mechanisms and their effectiveness also remain unchanged”, the study says

‘You never know, whether you’ll return home alive or not’

In 2018, according to a survey conducted by the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC-Georgia), a significant part of the Georgian population (36%) considered diversity to be harmful to the country, and 43% believed that minorities did not have the right to protest on the streets.

According to the same study, the most positive attitudes among minorities were towards people with disabilities, the most negative were towards LGBT people. A significant proportion of respondents were also relatively unfriendly towards migrants from non-European countries.

In 2018, 70% of respondents did not want to have not only personal, but also business relationships with LGBT people. Only 22% answered this question in the affirmative.

During the survey, participants were asked to name groups that they would not like to see as neighbors. After drug addicts (67%) and criminals (67%), respondents named LGBT people – 54% of respondents would not want to live next to them. Respondents were most tolerant towards people with disabilities – only one percent said they would not want such people in their neighborhood.