From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Georgia From Solidarity to Solutions: The Government Response to Internal Displacement in Georgia
taxes), free primary and secondary education, health
coverage under existing state programs and assistance
in finding temporary employment in line with their
profession and qualifications. IDPs living in collective
centers also are entitled to free electricity, water and
waste disposal. The authorities also have the responsibility
to assist IDPs to return to their place of permanent
residence once the reasons for their displacement cease
to exist. They are also to assist IDPs to locate graves of
relatives killed and the whereabouts of individual IDPs
who have gone missing “as a result of massive human
rights violations.”
The law designates the Ministry of Refugees and
Accommodation (which in 2010 was officially renamed
the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the
Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees)
as responsible for ensuring its implementation; the
ministry thereby serves as the national government
focal point for responding to internal displacement (see
Benchmark 7 below). More broadly, the law affirms that
“the rights of IDPs are protected by the State.” Further,
it specifies that “[a]ny illegal action of the authorities
may be appealed to higher authorities or to the court”
and that any violation of the law on IDPs is punishable
by law. 76
In Georgia, therefore, the legislative framework
for responding to internal displacement
and safeguarding the rights of IDPs already
was well developed in the years following the
onset of displacement and thus preceded the
development of the Guiding Principles on
Internal Displacement. An extensive study of
the compatibility of Georgian legislation with
the Guiding Principles, which was conducted
by local lawyers from 2001 to 2002 with the
support of the Brookings Project on Internal
Displacement, found that in large part the
Georgian legislation conformed with and
76 Government of Georgia, Law of Georgia on Forcibly
Displaced—Persecuted Persons, 1996, as amended 25
October 2010, Articles 9 and 11.
195
sometimes offered an even higher degree of
protection than the international standards set
out in the Guiding Principles. Nonetheless, the
study recommended that national legislation be
strengthened or at least clarified in a number of
areas in order to bring it in line with the Guiding
Principles. For instance, electoral legislation
needed to be amended in order to enable IDPs
to exercise fully their right to vote in their place
of displacement without forfeiting the specific
assistance benefits to which they were entitled
by law as IDPs; certain amendments to the
procedures for IDP registration were required;
minimum standards needed to be elaborated
regarding living conditions for IDPs; and legal
provisions needed to be elaborated to protect
the right of IDPs to own land and participate
in the property privatization process and to
regulate IDPs’ claims for property restitution.
Those recommendations were presented and
discussed with government officials as well as
representatives of IDP associations, civil society
groups, and international organizations at a
roundtable convened in 2002. 77
In subsequent years, important revisions to strengthen
the legal protections of the rights of IDPs that the
framework affords have included a ruling by the
Constitutional Court of Georgia confirming the rights
of IDPs to purchase property without losing their IDP
status or in any way diminishing their right to return; 78
and revisions to the Electoral Code to safeguard IDPs’
voting rights in local and parliamentary elections held
in their place of displacement (see Benchmark 9b). The
Georgian Parliament also adopted a law on property restitution
for IDPs from South Ossetia. It was developed
77 See study by Chkeidze and Korkelia, “Report on the
Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and the
Law of Georgia,” as well as the Roundtable report, both in
Cohen, Kälin, and Mooney, eds., The Guiding Principles on
Internal Displacement and the Law of the South Caucasus,
pp. 153–69.
78 Kharashvili, Kharashvili, and Subeliani, “Experience of
the Guiding Principles in Georgia,” p. 16.