Building Integrity in Georgia (BIG)
The Human Rights Division works towards promoting a dialogue between minority and majority groups by organizing seminars and workshops. The topics covered during the workshops address sensitive issues such as the registration law of religious establishments, status of religious establishments and religious education in the secondary schools of Georgia.
Guests coming to ICCN in order to meet religious minority representatives often represent high governmental officials who are directly involved in the decision-making process. The idea to establish the Movement for the Protection of Basic Rights and Freedoms is the result of the work carried out in the framework of the project. A movement against religious intolerance that started back in 2002 as a spontaneous response to the ongoing process, gradually reshaped itself into a structured body, the civil council for the protection of basic rights and freedoms (the activities of the council were discussed in the previous section).
Training Division regularly carries out training in the framework of the projects. The target groups are journalists, young wing of political parties, school teachers and staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. All these target groups were selected according to the needs of the society. The level of tolerance in all the above listed groups is relatively poor in Georgia, although all these categories teachers, journalists, young politicians and government officials are constantly influencing the society in their day-by day work. Thus, it was decided to specifically target the listed groups, focusing on issues such as conflict transformation, peace journalism, tolerance, religious and ethnic tolerance, etc.
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The research division is carrying out surveys in the sphere of general tolerance, evaluating and then analyzing the attitudes of the population towards ethnic, religious minorities, the decision-making bodies, the mainstream church, etc. Interestingly, the research implies evaluating the situation over a certain period of time, thus it is possible to see the tendencies and changing attitudes.
The Publishing sub-division has been carrying out extensive work in the framework of the BIG programme. In year 2005, it published books titled "Georgia and the World Religions", "The Politics of the Russian Orthodox Church in Abkhazia in the 19th century" and issued quarterly publications of the journal "Peace Times".