On Monday, May 4th, Yaroslava Babych, Academic Director of ISET Policy Institute, participated in a conference “Gender Biased Sex Selection in Georgia: Context, Evidence, Implications and Proposed Solutions” jointly organized by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank that took place in Tbilisi, Georgia.

The main purpose of this conference was the dissemination of the findings of the report "Gender biased sex selection in Georgia" prepared by Dr. Christophe Guilmoto on behalf of UNFPA and the report "Missing Women" of the South Caucasus: Causes, Consequences and Policy Options by Nora Dudwik and Nishtha Sinha, World Bank.

Prof. Babych was responsible to lead and moderate one of the three thematic group discussions on “Advocacy, awareness, and education activities”. The purpose of this working group was to initiate discussion about advocacy, awareness, and education activities to prevent gender-biased sex selection. The outcome of the session was to elaborate on recommendations to raise awareness of the issue and its causes. The working group addressed some of the questions and came up with specific recommendations for: (1) what is the level of awareness of skewed sex ratios at birth, son preference, sex-selective abortions, and the complexity of causes behind them in Georgia? (2) What could be done to raise awareness on the issue and its deeper causes?

ISET is one of the organizations that commented early on the issue of skewed sex ratio at birth in the South Caucasus, its possible economic causes and implications (Sex Ratio at Birth: Is the South Caucasus Heading the Way of China? Yasya Babych, 2012, ISET Economist blog).