The Decent Work Country Programme sets three strategic priorities — and provides a public accountability framework that Georgia’s social partners should use.
The ILO’s Decent Work Country Programme for Georgia 2024–2026 was signed in Tbilisi in February 2024, formalising the ILO’s operational priorities in the country for a three-year cycle. The document is notable not only for its policy content but for what it represents institutionally: a public, tripartite commitment — signed by the Government of Georgia, the Georgian Trade Union Confederation (GTUC), and the Georgian Employers Association (GEA), alongside the ILO — to specific outcomes measurable against the Sustainable Development Goals.
The three strategic priorities of the DWCP are: first, promoting employment and entrepreneurship, with particular attention to youth employment and skills development; second, strengthening social protection and labour standards compliance; and third, advancing social dialogue and industrial relations. Each priority contains specific outputs and target indicators, making the programme one of the few publicly available policy instruments in Georgia with explicit accountability mechanisms.
On employment and entrepreneurship, the DWCP targets a measurable reduction in youth NEET (not in employment, education, or training) rates, which stood at approximately 28 percent in 2023. It commits to supporting the introduction of sector-level skills anticipation mechanisms — a prerequisite for addressing the education mismatch that GILS has documented at 27 percent of the employed workforce. Specific outputs include a Skills Anticipation Assessment for at least three priority sectors, and revised vocational education qualification frameworks aligned with labour market demand.
On social protection, the programme explicitly references the inadequacy of Georgia’s statutory minimum wage and commits to supporting a review process. This is significant: the ILO has, in effect, placed its institutional weight behind the position that GEL 20 is not a credible floor. The DWCP also targets formalisation, with an output of a national formalisation strategy covering at least three high-informality sectors — agriculture, domestic service, and construction are the likely candidates. Progress on this output would represent a substantial advance on current policy, which has no published formalisation strategy.
On social dialogue, the programme targets improved functionality of the Tripartite Commission, including a revised legal mandate and a secretariat with dedicated staffing. The current Commission meets irregularly, has no binding decision-making authority, and lacks administrative infrastructure. The DWCP commits the ILO to supporting a legislative review of the Commission’s mandate — which, if implemented, would represent the most significant reform to Georgia’s social dialogue architecture since the Commission’s establishment in 2004.
GILS Position: The DWCP is the most comprehensive multilateral commitment to Georgian labour market reform in the current policy cycle. Its value lies not in what the ILO can impose — the organisation has no enforcement authority — but in the accountability framework it creates. Social partners who signed the programme can cite its outputs in advocacy; parliament can request reporting against its indicators; civil society can benchmark government performance against public commitments.
GILS will publish an independent tracking report on DWCP outputs annually, beginning with a baseline assessment in January 2027. We invite the ILO Country Office, GTUC, GEA, and the Ministry of Labour to engage with this process.
The DWCP is not a plan that will implement itself. It requires political will, budget allocation, and consistent tripartite engagement. The document provides the framework. What remains is the work.
Read the full GILS analysis: https://labour.edu.ge/dwcp-georgia-2024/