From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Georgia From Solidarity to Solutions: The Government Response to Internal Displacement in Georgia
Second, government IDP figures do not take into account
that some return has occurred. The rationale is
partly pragmatic: without having access to and effective
control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the government
is not able to access and assist returnees or ensure
their security. However, there also are political reasons—namely,
concern that return will be cited by the
de facto authorities as evidence of their establishment
of effective control over the area. The Georgian government
therefore does not officially acknowledge returns.
Consequently, returnees retain their IDP status and thus
remain eligible to receive all the entitlements that the
IDP status affords under national legislation, including
the monthly allowance. Particularly in the case of
Abkhazia, significant numbers of IDPs are reported
by UNHCR to have returned (spontaneously, without
UNHCR assistance) in recent years. It is estimated that
45,000 to 50,000 IDPs have returned spontaneously
to southeastern Abkhazia, in particular to the region
of Gali as well as to Ochamchira and Tkuarchali. For
several years, UNHCR, which maintains a small field
presence in the area and undertakes regular monitoring
of the overall protection situation, has pointed out the
need to collect more precise and comprehensive data
on the number and conditions of the returned IDPs. An
agreement was brokered by UNHCR in 2006 between
the government of Georgia and the de facto Abkhaz
authorities to conduct data “verification” regarding the
situation of the returned IDPs and of other conflict-affected
population residing in the area; this exercise was
explicitly encouraged and supported by the UN Security
Council. 52 However, lack of consensus among the parties
to the agreement on implementation modalities has
continued to impede verification. To this day, the occurrence
and sustainability of returns to Abkhazia remains
a contentious issue among the parties to the conflict and
a stumbling block in the conflict resolution process (see
also Benchmark 10).
Historically it has proven difficult to obtain accurate
and agreed IDP figures, even when focusing on the
52 UN Security Council Resolutions 1752 (2007), 1781
(2007) and 1808 (2008).
189
defined scope of the government’s IDP registration exercises.
To address this issue, in 2004–2005, UNHCR
and the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation
(SDC) supported the government in undertaking an
IDP verification exercise. During the exercise, 221,000
people were verified and registered as IDPs, although
the Georgian government did not endorse the jointly
calculated figure and continued to use its own estimate
of 247,000 into 2007, although no new displacement
had occurred in the interim. A closer alignment between
official and nonofficial figures was achieved by
April 2008, after the re-registration process that began
in April 2007. However, the registration process was
flawed in a number of respects, including that it lacked
information on registration dates and procedures; on
redress mechanisms if deadlines were missed; on the
possibility for invalid, incapacitated, or incarcerated
IDPs to be registered through on-site visits; insufficient
staff on site; and delays. Moreover, while the exercise
did collect certain disaggregated data (including that an
estimated 50.5 percent of the Georgia IDP population is
female, 70 percent is urban, and 44 percent live in stateowned
collective accommodations while the remainder
live in private accommodations with host families or in
their own rented or purchased accommodations) the
registration process is still not an effective mechanism
for identifying the most vulnerable. This data gap inevitably
poses complications for any programs, including
housing allocation programs, seeking to give priority to
the most vulnerable persons. 53
Residency data is especially problematic. Owing to the
protracted nature of displacement, many people inevitably
have changed their residences, sometimes several
times. Updating that information is, by law, the responsibility
of IDPs at the time that they move, and it also
should be captured during re-registration exercises. To
a certain extent, inaccuracies can be attributed to the
failure of some IDPs to re-register when they change residence.
However, as noted above, IDPs are not adequately
informed about changes in registration dates and procedures
or about available remedies in the event that they
53 UNHCR, Gap Analysis, 2009, pp. 17, 22.