Promoting IDPs' and Women's Voices in Post-Conflict Georgia

AVENUES OF IDPS’ AND WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATIONNational Level ParticipationThere are several avenues and processes that exist for IDP participation in public life and peacebuildingat the national level, including through the government, Parliament, political parties and particularlythrough civil society. However, IDP participation varies through the different avenues, more limited ininfluence in government, and more active in civil society, which seeks to represent their interests butserves as a far less influential avenue. Among civil society, women are more represented than men.However, men yield more influence and are more represented in government and political office.IDPs have experienced different and often limited opportunities for participation and forms ofrepresentation over the past two decades. During the first years of their displacement, they were largelydependent on the Abkhaz government-in-exile for a political voice, an essentially ineffectiverepresentative body. 67 Following the Rose Revolution in 2004, Georgia’s new ruling party, the UnitedNational Movement, restructured the representation of displaced persons. They broadened themandate of the MRA by assigning it primary responsibility for dealing with the displaced community. 68The government’s decision effectively took away most if not all of the national power and influence ofthe Abkhaz government-in-exile. 69Some perceived this national level political restructuring aspromoting IDPs’ integration by no longer treating them as a separate political entity. However, it hasresulted in the current situation, where, “in general IDPs' voices are not heard...They don't have aparty…Very few [are] able to convey their messages to the decision-makers.” 70As for the Georgians displaced from Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia, they did not have government-inexileinstitutions that came with them to Georgia proper. 71 However, the Provisional Administration ofTskhinvali region controlled a sizable territory of the region until 2008. Ossetians and Georgians wereelected to this body in a parallel process to separatist elections in November 2006. They have played aless visible role than the Abkhaz government-in-exile but still represented IDPs from this region.Gendered Participation of IDPsIDP men and women also experience different access to avenues of participation, in addition toengaging in the public sphere in different ways. More generally, women and men have dealt with67 “Out of the Margins: Securing a Voice for Internally Displaced People: Lessons from Georgia,” Conciliation Resources, 2009,Print, 16-17.68 Ibid, 16-17.69 Erin, Mooney. “From Solidarity to Solutions: The Government Response to Internal Displacement in Georgia,” FromResponsibility to Response: Assessing National Approaches to Internal Displacement,” Brookings Institution – London School ofEconomics Project on Internal Displacement, November 2011, 203.70 Senior Fellow (Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies), Personal Interview, 20 March 2012.71 Out of the Margins: Securing a Voice for Internally Displaced People, 15. This community was much smaller than the onefrom Abkhazia and did not represent the majority in the Soviet autonomous institutions of the South Ossetian autonomousregion.22