UN Agency · Georgia / South Caucasus
The ILO Tbilisi Country Office is the regional hub for ILO’s work in Georgia and the South Caucasus. It provides technical assistance to government, employers, and trade unions; manages the Decent Work Country Programme (DWCP); and serves as the ILO’s primary interface with Georgian labour market stakeholders.
ILO opened office following Georgia’s independence and ILO membership.
Elevated from liaison to full Country Office; expanded technical capacity.
First comprehensive Decent Work Country Programme for Georgia, establishing four priority areas: employment, labour standards, social dialogue, and social protection.
Focused on OSH reform, employment generation, and social dialogue strengthening; supported the 2019 OSH Law revision.
ILO coordinated emergency labour market response to the influx of Russian and Ukrainian nationals through and into Georgia.
First DWCP to include explicit EU candidacy alignment objectives; focuses on collective bargaining, labour inspection, and minimum wage reform.
The ILO Tbilisi Office plays three distinct roles in Georgia’s labour market: technical assistance provider (supporting law reform and capacity building), monitoring body (tracking Georgia’s implementation of ratified ILO conventions), and tripartite facilitator (supporting the Tripartite Commission as a non-voting observer and providing secretariat support).
The DWCP 2024–2028 is the most comprehensive framework ILO has applied to Georgia. For the first time, it explicitly links Georgia’s decent work objectives to EU accession requirements — recognising that the accession process is the primary external driver of labour market reform.
The ILO Tbilisi Office is a highly effective technical partner for Georgia’s labour market reform. Its non-partisan position allows it to work simultaneously with government, employers, and trade unions in ways that no single constituency organisation can. The DWCP 2024–2028’s EU alignment is strategically sound — it ties ILO objectives to the most powerful external reform incentive currently operating in Georgia.
GILS works closely with ILO data outputs (ILOSTAT, DWCP monitoring reports) and considers ILO technical guidance authoritative on convention implementation. We note that ILO’s non-voting observer status in the Tripartite Commission limits its ability to escalate when government fails to implement Commission recommendations — a structural constraint that cannot be addressed without Georgian government consent.
GILS commends the DWCP 2024–2028 framework and specifically calls for accelerated implementation of the social dialogue component, with binding timelines for collective bargaining coverage increases tied to EU accession milestones.
How this organisation fits into Georgia’s broader labour market governance structure.