About the Report
Published in March 2019, the report resulted from a three-phase participatory process launched by Europe Foundation in mid-2018, in consultation with Georgian DPOs and eight government ministries, including the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport.
Georgia’s 2014 Census counted 187,000 persons with disabilities, roughly 5% of the population, but budget documents rarely say much about how public money reaches them. This disability related budget analysis of Georgia, prepared by Alexandre Cote of the Center for Inclusive Policy (CIP) with Mikheil Kukava for Europe Foundation, sets out to change that, tracing exactly where disability-related public spending goes and where it falls short.
How Much Does Georgia Spend on Inclusion of Persons With Disabilities?
Spending has grown steadily but modestly: from 0.45% of GDP in 2013 to 0.56% in 2018, reaching an estimated 213 to 237 million GEL. That places Georgia above the 0.3%-of-GDP threshold most low- and middle-income countries fall under, but still well below the roughly 1.2% of GDP that OECD countries spend on disability benefits alone.
Where Does the Money Actually Go?
The Ministry for Internally Displaced Persons, Labor, Health and Social Affairs (MoLHSA) accounts for 93% of identified spending, almost entirely through the social protection “social package” allowance. The Ministry of Education spends a comparatively tiny 1% of its total budget on children with special educational needs. Most other ministries report little to no disability-related spending at all, despite running programs that touch persons with disabilities’ lives daily.
Why Do Some Groups Get Left Behind?
The Sign Language Funding Gap
Georgia funds just 10 sign language interpreters nationwide, unchanged for five years, representing only 0.3% of the relevant program budget. In the same period, spending on cochlear implants grew to 30 times the sign language budget, despite serving a similar number of beneficiaries, a striking imbalance in how “disability related spending” gets distributed even within a single ministry.
The Mental Health Spending Problem
Georgia spends around 24 million GEL a year on mental health, but more than half of that funds institutional and hospital-based care rather than the community-based support the CRPD requires. Community services like crisis intervention exist but remain under-resourced, especially outside Tbilisi.
What's Blocking Better Budget Analysis?
The report identifies a structural problem underneath these gaps: Georgia’s budget doesn’t consistently code or aggregate disability-related spending, so even government accountants sometimes can’t retrieve exact figures. Combined with an unfinished shift to results-based budgeting and limited space for OPDs in the consultation process, the system makes it genuinely difficult to answer basic questions about whether spending is working.
What Does CIP Recommend?
For the government: build a cost, multi-year implementation plan with DPOs, appoint disability focal points across every ministry, and require disaggregated, publicly available budget data. For OPDs: form a coordinated advocacy platform representing all disability groups and regions, conduct a joint gap analysis against CRPD and SDG standards, and engage in the budget cycle every year rather than reactively.
