From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Georgia From Solidarity to Solutions: The Government Response to Internal Displacement in Georgia
hence need to trust the government more.” 156 It is important
to note that this survey took place before the
series of evictions, beginning in summer 2010, of IDPs
from selected collective centers; the author of the survey
surmises that those developments likely would have had
a negative impact on IDPs’ perceptions of the authorities,
especially in Tbilisi. 157
(b) Are IDPs able to exercise their right
to political participation, in particular the
right to vote, without undue difficulties
related to their displacement?
The Constitution of Georgia (1995) provides in Article
28.1 that every citizen eighteen years of age and older
has the right to participate in referenda and elections.
However, for many years, until the relevant provisions
eventually were amended, national legislation effectively
restricted the voting rights of IDPs in parliamentary
and local elections. 158
The Georgian parliament is elected through a mixed
electoral system whereby half of the 150 seats are allocated
to registered political parties on the basis of
proportional representation and the remaining 75 seats
are occupied by members elected by majority vote in
single-member electoral districts. According to the 1995
Organic Law of Georgia on Parliamentary Elections,
IDPs were entitled to vote only in the proportional component
of parliamentary elections, not in the election of
the parliamentary representative for the district where
they were residing while displaced. The rationale given
was that IDPs already had representation in the form of
the parliamentary deputies for the electoral districts of
their places of origin. Indeed, the mandate of the eight
deputies from Abkhazia, who were elected in 1992 and
156 Ibid.
157 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
158 For the more detailed analysis on which the summary in
the present case study is based, including an analysis of
how these restrictions manifested in every election held
in Georgia from the outset of the displacement crisis
through 2004, see Mooney and Jarrah, The Voting Rights of
Internally Displaced Persons: The OSCE Region, pp. 33–41.
211
thus were in office at the time the conflict began, was
extended by Parliament until such time as the central
government reestablished its control over Abkhazia and
national elections could be held there again. The seats
of the two deputies from South Ossetia were to remain
vacant until similar conditions were established in that
region. In other words, the mandate of the deputies from
Abkhazia was extended indefinitely (until a decision of
Parliament in 2004 ended the practice; see below), and
that remained the case notwithstanding the fact that
many IDPs indicated that after several years they no
longer felt that their views were being well-represented
by the Abkhaz government in exile. Interestingly, internally
displaced women in particular voiced wide discontent
with the Abkhaz deputies, whom they perceived to
be “genuinely uninterested in and out of touch with the
issues and concerns of displaced people.” 159 Meanwhile,
IDPs originating from South Ossetia were left without
any representatives in Parliament whatsoever.
Regarding local elections, under Georgian law, eligibility
to participate as an elector is related to an individual’s
registered place of permanent residence. For
IDPs to take part in local elections in the area where
they reside while displaced, they would have to register
that locality as their new place of permanent residence.
Changing the registration of place of permanent residence
was legally feasible. However, national legislation
regulating the status of IDPs stipulated that if an IDP
registered her or his residence in a place other than her
or his place of origin, the individual’s IDP status and the
entitlements and benefits that this status entails would
be revoked (see Benchmark 5). In addition, the rumor
was rife among IDPs that if they voted for representatives
of the area in which they were residing, that would
signal acceptance of the de facto territorial situation and
would be misconstrued as a decision on their part to
relinquish their right to return and seek restitution of
their property. For political reasons related to the goal of
reestablishing Georgia’s control over the conflict areas,
159 Ibid., p. 33, and note192 citing Norwegian Refugee
Council, Profile of Internal Displacement: Georgia 18
March 2004, p. 81 (www.internal-displacement.org).