UN Human Rights Council. Forum on Minority Issues. Ninth Session. 24 and 25 November 2016 Problems and prospects of the development of education in the Gali district and in Georgia overall Dear Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. Dear Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I will talk about a painful topic for my country, about Abkhazia. Specifically, the question concerns the restrictions on studying in the native Georgian language in the Gali district of Abkhazia. You know that Abkhazia is recognised by the international community as an integral part of Georgia. But this region of my country is occupied by the northern neighbour of Georgia - Russia. In the Gali district, the right of the Georgian population to study fully their mother tongue is infringed upon – this is discrimination based on ethnicity, although in the Constitution of Abkhazia and the Law on the State Language, citizens of the republic are entitled to receive education in their native language. Ethnic Georgians in their own country became ethnic minorities. According to 2011, about 40,000 Georgians live in Abkhazia. Since 2015, the Abkhaz administration in 11 Georgian-language schools in the Gali district has shifted training from Georgian to Russian, reducing the teaching of children in their native Georgian language to a minimum. And we are speaking out against this - the representatives of the national minorities of Georgia. I am Armenian. Together we are working to resolve topical issues, placing the principle of Georgia's unity, equality, and the preservation of its multinational traditions on the first place. Language and educational policy in Georgia has two main aspects: on the one hand, it is to increase the level of knowledge of the state language with the aim of integrating national minorities, and on the other hand, the protection of minority languages ​and their right to receive education in their native language. In this area, there are a number of issues that need to be addressed. Preschool education: The limited number of kindergartens in the regions of Georgia, the lack of specially trained personnel, the lack of curricula of pre-school education in minority languages. All of these factors affect the level of preschool education. Providing high-quality preschool education is one of the main goals of the educational reform, as the Minister of Education and Science of Georgia stated. General education: The problems of aging and the lack of school personnel, the occasional use of religious attributes in schools, the problems of textbooks in the native language, the incorrect translations of textbooks into minority languages, the lack of information about national minorities in textbooks, the inefficient system of bilingual education, gradual reduction of hours in the mother tongue of national minorities, the absence of certified examinations in the mother tongue of national minorities hinder the quality of the educational process.