From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

CHAPTER 2 Case Studies: Georgia, Kenya, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka
majority, of IDPs. 170 Further, the government’s advocacy
of the right to return is consistent with international
human rights standards, which support IDPs’ right to
return as a general principle. 171 In fact, the right of IDPs
and refugees to return to Abkhazia and South Ossetia
is recognized in the ceasefire agreements brokered for
both conflicts back in the early 1990s, 172 and it continues
to be emphasized by the international community as a
key principle today. 173
Yet in the absence of a lasting solution to the conflicts,
for most IDPs return is a goal that has remained out of
reach. Even so, until recent years, the government effectively
held IDPs hostage to that goal by going so far as
to put legal, administrative and political obstacles in the
way of IDPs who wanted access to alternative solutions,
namely local integration, and to their full rights in their
place of displacement. 174 As a result, IDPs were “left in
170 See, for example, Fichovo Grono, Displacement in Georgia:
IDP Attitudes to Conflict, Return and Justice, pp. 18–19;
IDP Voices Project, A Heavy Burden: Internally Displaced
in Georgia: Stories from Abkhazia and South Ossetia
(IDMC, April 2008) (www.internal-displacement.org).
These findings also accord with the author’s interviews
with IDPs, for instance, in May 2000, and in 2006–07.
171 Principle 28, Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement,
UN Doc. E/CN.4/1998/53/Add.2.
172 Quadripartite Agreement of 1994, UN Doc. S/1994/397,
Annex II.
173 See, for example, UN Security Council Resolution
1866 (2009) of 13 February 2009. See also UN General
Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 65/287 of 29 June 2011 on
the Status of Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees
from Abkhazia, Georgia, and the Tskhinvali Region/South
Ossetia, Georgia; UNGA Resolution 64/296 of 7 September
2010; UNGA Resolution 63/307 of 9 September 2009; and
UNGA Resolution 62/249 of 15 May 2008.
174 See UN Commission on Human Rights, Report of the
Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally
Displaced Persons, Mr. Francis Deng—Addendum:
Profiles in Displacement: Georgia, 2001, paras. 34–69;
UN Commission on Human Rights, Report of the
Representative of the Secretary-General on the Human
Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Walter Kälin—
Mission to Georgia (21 to 24 December 2005), 24 March
2006 , para. 15; Mooney and Jarrah, The Voting Rights of
Internally Displaced Persons, pp. 33–41.
214
limbo,” unable to return in safety and rebuild their lives
in their area of origin but at the same impeded by the
government from getting on with their lives elsewhere
in the country.
In fact, during periods over the past seventeen years
when there has been an absence of active hostilities,
considerable IDP return has occurred. As noted in
the overview section to this study, from 1997 to 2005,
UNHCR assisted some 5,700 persons who were internally
displaced from or within South Ossetia to return
to their areas of origin. In the case of Abkhazia, the government
approach has varied from actively promoting
return, often prematurely, to at other times denying that
any return has taken place. IDPs have “recalled how
in 1993 and 1998,” even in the absence of a negotiated
solution to the conflict, “the government, through mass
media, strongly encouraged IDPs to return without sufficient
safety guarantees” following agreements between
the parties on return. 175 That return was not sustainable
in the absence of security conditions and a lasting solution
to the conflict was exposed with especially devastating
effect in May 1998, when a renewed outbreak
of violence in the Gali district of Abkhazia sent some
40,000 recent returnees fleeing again and saw more than
$2 million in international assistance for return and reconstruction
literally going up in flames with the burning
of some 1,400 houses and sixteen schools. 176
In subsequent years, the de facto authorities have allowed
IDPs to return only to a defined area in southeastern
Abkhazia, namely the districts of Gali, Ochamchira
and Tkuarchuli. UNHCR reports that approximately
50,000 IDPs have returned to their villages of origin in
175 Global IDP Project, Workshop on the Guiding Principles
(2000), p. 4. See also Erin D. Mooney, “Internal
Displacement and the Conflict in Abkhazia,” International
Journal on Group Rights, vol. 3, no. 3 (1995/1996), pp.
209–14, 222–24.
176 UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General to
the Security Council Concerning the Situation in Abkhazia,
Georgia, S/1998/647, 14 July 1998, para. 13 (www.un.org/
Docs/sc/reports/1998/sgrep98.htm).