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

addition to their longer-term rights. It involves some privileges, such as access to a small monthlystipend, housing support, and social services. IDP identity is also directly tied to the right to return -many IDPs hold on to their status because it symbolizes their claim to their property left behind inAbkhazia and South Ossetia. This approach has arguably deterred the integration process for some IDPs,an attitude that the government has in many ways also supported. The politicization of this group’sidentity over the past two decades has proved a challenge for the group as a whole to escape theinherent association with political interests around the conflict.These various individual and collective issues make identification with IDP status a complicated concern.The extent to which IDPs identify with this term is unique to each person. Some IDPs speak collectivelyabout IDP interests, while others prefer to speak about individual needs. This is a choice that eachdisplaced person has the right to make based on his or her own needs and interests. These choicesdirectly influence the extent to which IDPs feel and promote solidarity as a group.The decision to understand IDP identity as a personal characteristic versus a label for a group hassignificant political implications related to IDPs’ integration and participation in society. On the onehand, some IDP advocates make the argument that members of this population should rally behind thisidentity in order to build a more significant lobbying group that can promote IDPs’ particular needs andinterests. Others question whether identifying IDPs as a separate group in fact hinders their integrationprocess, as it reinforces their distinction from the broader population. While it is clear that displacedpersons’ opportunities for participation are lacking, efforts to remedy the issue must address this keyquestion. Only in this way can they support IDPs in participating as they see fit: as individual members ofsociety or as members of an IDP constituency.The fact that it is impossible to speak about one IDP identity further challenges efforts to rally behind aunifying concept of what it means to belong to this group. IDP identity is fragmented by gender, by twodifferent waves of displacement, and by living situation, and these fragmentations all contribute topsychosocial divisions within IDP communities. By and large, IDP identity in Georgia seems to connectmore to individual and family conditions rather than a sense of collective solidarity. This influences thechoices that IDPs make in participating within their communities or though broader coalitions tostrengthen their voices on local and national levels.IDPs’ strong social networks imply that there is at least some sense of unity within IDP communities.One IDP noted the untapped strength of IDP networks: “Generally people living in collective centershave been a community for many years, so there’s very strong social network connections among thoseIDPs, and then they might have a family connection with a community in another collective center notfar away. 343 ” Such networks have led to the creation of unique initiatives. IDP solidarity has beencapitalized, for instance, through local initiatives like the Taso Foundation’s self-help groups. These343 Tina Gewis, Personal Interview.66