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

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSWe are grateful for the support of our client organization, the Women’s Political Resource Center(WPRC), and WPRC’s President, Lika Nadaraia, who has extended this unique opportunity to our team.We would also like to thank the supportive staff members of WPRC, including Keti Bakradze, andNanuka Mzhavanadze. We hope that our project will contribute to the valuable work undertaken atWPRC, and its newly-launched Frontline Center in Tbilisi.At Columbia University, we were privileged to work with Professor Gocha Lordkipanidze, our academicadvisor, who shared with us a wealth of insight and guidance. His knowledge on Georgian society,governance, international law, human rights, and conflict resolution helped advance our research andinform this report. Jenny McGill, the Workshop in Development Practice Director, and Ilona Vinklerova,the Economic and Political Development Concentration Manager, have provided extraordinary supportthat cannot be measured simply by the time they contributed. We would also like to thank Kristy Kelly,Sara Minard, Lincoln Mitchell and David Phillips for sharing their expertise and enthusiasm.We very much appreciate the time that the many NGO, government, and international organizationrepresentatives set aside to share their expertise with us in Georgia, as well as in New York, Washington,D.C., London, and Switzerland. We would especially like to thank the staff of Association Gaenati whokindly hosted us in Zugdidi and helped connect us with other stakeholders in the region. We would liketo also thank Dalila Khorava of Georgian Support for Refugees, Vakhtang Piranishvili of CAREInternational, Nino Shervashidze and Eliko Bendeliani at Sukhumi University, for their help in organizingfocus groups that significantly enhanced our research. Some of our interviewees also participated in ourroundtable discussion, so we would to thank them for engaging in a discussion with other stakeholdersand helping us formulate our recommendations. Nino Khelaia, Zita Baslandze and Kate Terdzishvili alsoprovided valuable support as interpreters.Our research would not have been possible without the assistance of individuals across Georgia whobravely shared their very personal experiences of displacement with us. Overall, we were incrediblytouched by the generosity of all our interviewees, who were quick to extend helping hands and providesupport to our project.2