Ethnic Minorities and Access to Information

The quality and frequency of the flow of information provided in an understandable language is the main problem the Ethnic minorities residing in Kvemo Kartli and Samtskhe-Javakheti face, in terms of access to information.

Reads the conclusion made to the assessment report on National Concept and Action Plan for Tolerance and Civic Integration presented by the Civil Development Agency (CiDA) on November 8 at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel, Tbilisi. The representatives of NGOs and local self-government and government bodies as well as Tamar Kintsurashvili, Chair of Civil Integration and Tolerance Council under the President of Georgia attended the presentation.

The assessment report was drawn up within the framework of Multi-ethnic Confidence Building (MCBN) project being implemented by CiDA with the support of UNDP. In Samtskhe-Javakheti region the project is being partnered with Union of Democrat Meskhs (UDM).

In the scope of the project the issues such as the rule of law and human rights, level of education and development of state language, local media and access to information, process of political integration and civil participation, social and economic integration as well as preserving cultural identity have been assessed.

The assessment report, with the running period of January 2010 – August 2011, points out that the population in both regions considers television as the main source of information. Besides, the population is watching the programs of the TV channels being aired in the Azerbaijani and Armenian languages.

In the regions populated with ethnic minorities the First and Second Channels of the Georgian Public Broadcasting (GPB) broadcast newscasts produced in the minority languages through local TV channels.

For instance, Marneuli population, whose majority is made up of ethnic Azerbaijani is watching GPB First Channel newscast Moambe produced in the Azerbaijani language being concurrently rebroadcast by local TV company Marneuli TV.

The Samtskhe-Javakheti Armenian speaking population is watching the Moambe TV stories in the Armenian language being aired on Akhlakalaki-based TV company ATV 12 and Ninotsminda-based TV company Parvana. Nevertheless, according to the assessment report “the main source of information for the locals is the TV channels of neighboring countries.” It has been also found that there are villages and settlements with no access available to either local or national TV signal.

Even though the majority of population are using satellite aerials and can have access to Georgian channels they show preference for Turkish and Russian channels, citing the monotony of Georgian TV programming as a motive.

The essential part of ethnic minorities residing in Kvemo Kartli and Samtskhe-Javakjeti are not watching newscasts available on national channels due to the language barrier, thus filling up the demand for the programs of the kind through the TV channels of other countries.

According to the repot findings the GPB Russian-language channel PIK is not enjoying popularity among the population of the aforementioned regions, the majority of locals have not even heard of the channel of the kind.

The assessment report underlines that print media, as a rule, is not being read by the majority of the population but the availability of Azerbaijani and Armenian-language newspapers is important to the local population.

According to Zviad Devdariani, Director, CiDA the representatives of Kvemo Kartli and Samtskhe-Javakheti ethnic minorities are dependent on media outlets of neighboring countries.

 “Even though some of the newscasts on regional TVs are being translated into minority languages, these media outlets are evidently not that efficient to fully quench the population’ thirst for information,” said Zviad Devdariani reporting to Media.ge.

According to the assessment report only GPB newscasts are available to the ethnic minorities which is not sufficient to get ethnic non-Georgian population involved into the integration process.

 Taking into account the aforementioned issues the authors of the report are giving several recommendations in terms of improving access to media and information in the regions populated with ethnic minorities, in particular: expansion of the coverage area of national channels, development of  the production in the language understandable to the local population, collaboration with neighboring countries and implementation of joint projects, as well as the foreign organizations’ support to the joint media projects implemented by Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.