THE LAW ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT & DISREGARDING FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES

ანოტაცია

The issue of sexual harassment has recently become topical among Georgian society. A whole new article to the Administrative Offences Code (AOC) of Georgia has been initiated and adopted (Article 1661) by Parliament this year. The whole process was constantly accompanied by pompous slogans about protection of human rights. However, in case of critical rethinking of this legislative innovation one’s attention might be attracted by certain weirdness of the elements of this offence: “unwanted behavior of sexual nature committed against a person in public places that aims or/and causes violation of his/her dignity and creates frightening, hostile, humiliating, degrading or insulting conditions for him/her.” A doubt might arise in terms of whether the above mentioned regulation fully follows the fundamental principles of law namely: nullumcrimen sine lege and presumption of innocence. This report is a humble attempt to present an academic opinion upon this uneasy matter. Namely the intention is to analyse the elements of article 1661 AOC of Georgia through the prism of the above mentioned principles and find out whether is there full compliance between them or not.