Growing polarisation and political bias have been the general trends in the Georgian media since 2016. Televisions and online editions demonstrated significant improvement in reducing hate speech, which, however, remained a challenge for newspapers. Election coverage on the radios has not changed much in the last three years and stayed relatively balanced but superficial. Election coverage in all media segments lacked the presentation of electoral programmes and issue-oriented debates among competing electoral candidates.

These and other findings have been included in the final media monitoring reports of the 2018 Presidential Elections in Georgia, released on 13 December 2018 by the European Union (EU), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and three Georgian civil society organizations – Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics, Internews – Georgia and Civic Development Institute (CDI).

On 10 December, we mark the 70^th anniversary of that extraordinary document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It is, I firmly believe, as relevant today as it was when it was adopted 70 years ago.

Arguably even more so, as over the passing decades, it has passed from being an aspirational treatise into a set of standards that has permeated virtually every area of international law.

It has withstood the tests of the passing years, and the advent of dramatic new technologies and social, political and economic developments that its drafters could not have foreseen.