Born in 1975, Ms Thea Tsulukiani was appointed as Minister of Justice of Georgia in October 2012. Prior to her appointment, she was elected as a Member of Parliament for Nazaladevi, a single mandate constituency of Tbilisi, with 72% of the vote.
Ms Tsulukiani has 10 years of experience as a lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECHR) where at the same time she served as a member of the Committee for Rules of Court and as a rapporteur on the cases examined by single-judge compositions (2000-2010).
In 1997-1998, Ms Tsulukiani worked for the Foreign Affairs Analysis Center at the MFA of Georgia under the guidance of Mr A. Rondeli.
Ms Tsulukiani holds MPA degree from École Nationale d'administration (ENA) in France
(Averroès 1998-2000). She also holds a Master's degree in international law and international relations from the Tbilisi State University (1997) and a Master's degree in international politology from the Academy of Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia (1998).
In her capacity as a Minister of Justice, Ms Tsulukiani led bold reforms in the area of the rule of law and independence of the judiciary, human rights, open government and anticorruption. Amongst many others, she conducted complex and inclusive process in order to have the Istanbul Convention ratified by Georgia (2017) as well as to introduce the Juvenile Justice Code (2015), the Law of Georgia on Mediation (2019), the Law of Georgia on Rehabilitation of Companies (2020), the Law of Georgia on the Disabled (2020), etc.
Ms Tsulukiani was the chairperson of up to 13 Inter-agency Councils in the Government of Georgia, among them the Criminal Justice Reform Council, the Private Law Reform Council, the Anticorruption Council, the Anti-drug Council, the Anti-torture Council and the Anti-trafficking Council as well as the State Commission on Migration Issues and the Inter-agency Commission for Free and Fair Election.
In 2015-2018 Minister Tsulukiani served as a chairperson of the Prosecutorial Council of Georgia.
As of July 2018 Ms Tsulukiani initiated the new wave of penitentiary reform aiming at development of modern penitentiary and crime prevention systems.
As the Justice Minister, Ms Tsulukiani has been leading the humanitarian mission to repatriate Georgian minors from conflict areas in the Middle East to Georgia.
In September 2019 Ms Tsulukiani was appointed as a Deputy Prime Minister of Georgia.
In October 2020 she was elected as a Member of Parliament (party list) and served as the Head of the Committee for Education, Science and Culture.
On 22 March 2021 she was appointed as Minister of Culture, Sports and Youth.
Ms Tsulukiani married in 2017 and has a 4 years-old daughter.
Political Membership:
Vice-Chair of the party and Head of the Women Movement, Party of Free Democrats (May 2010-October 2012);
Member, Party of Free Democrats - Georgian Dream Coalition - (2011-2014);
Member, Party of Georgian Dream (2020-..);
Member of the Political Council, Party of Georgian Dream (2021-..).