From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Georgia From Solidarity to Solutions: The Government Response to Internal Displacement in Georgia
these areas. 177 However, these figures are not officially
acknowledged by the government of Georgia and efforts
to verify the number of returnees and their conditions
repeatedly have been resisted by the government.
Monitoring from UNHCR and others reveals that the
situation of the returnees remains precarious as the
area remains volatile, with general insecurity and serious
criminality, against which local law enforcement
bodies are either unable or unwilling to take effective
measures. Moreover, the “lack of a reliable state structure
and social welfare” means that inadequate social
protection for vulnerable people combined with limited
access to social rights, lack of sources of income and
poor infrastructure make for “extremely difficult living
conditions, especially for IDPs in the process of return,
[which are] hampering their sustained reintegration.” 178
UNHCR has pointed out the need for more precise and
comprehensive data on the number and conditions of
returned IDPs and of other conflict-affected persons in
the area in order to better assess and therefore better
address their needs. While an agreement was brokered
by UNHCR in 2006 between the de facto Abkhaz authorities
and the Georgian government to conduct a
verification and profiling exercise of returned IDPs—an
initiative supported by the UN Security Council since
2007 179 —implementation of the verification exercise
has been stalled in the absence of consensus between
the parties to the conflict on the operational modalities
of the exercise.
177 UNHCR, Submission to the UPR: Georgia, p. 4.
178 UNHCR, Submission to the UPR: Georgia, pp. 4–5. See
also Human Rights Watch, Living in Limbo: The Rights of
Ethnic Georgian Returnees to the Gali District of Abkhazia
(Human Rights Watch, July 2011) (www.hrw.org); 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. 75–104; 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, paras. 35–43.
179 UN Security Council Resolutions 1752 (2007), 1781
(2007) and 1808 (2008).
215
Return of IDPs and refugees always has been a heavily
politicized issue and major stumbling block in the peace
processes for both conflicts, in particular regarding
Abkhazia and since August 2008 more intensively politicized
regarding South Ossetia. For the government of
Georgia, the return of IDPs is regarded as integral part
of reestablishing territorial and political control over the
breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Osssetia and
for attenuating the regions’ claims for self-determination
by reversing the significant demographic changes
wrought by displacement. For the same reasons, the de
facto authorities largely resist return—or at least mass
return—of IDPs and refugees, albeit with some limited
exceptions, as noted above. It should be noted that resistance
to return or limitations on return are not in
line with the Quadripartite Agreement on Voluntary
Return of Refugees and Displaced Persons, signed in
April 1994 by the Georgian government, the Abkhaz de
facto authorities, the Russian Federation and UNHCR,
which remains the basis for conflict resolution efforts
on displacement issues. 180 Lasting political solutions to
these conflicts and the possibility of large-scale return
of displaced persons remain elusive.
Meanwhile, the same political imperatives that drive the
government’s emphasis on promoting the right to return
also led to the adoption of national laws and policies designed
to impede IDPs from integrating—economically,
socially, and politically—in the areas in which they were
residing while displaced (see Benchmarks 5 and 6). For
instance, IDPs legally were barred from owning land
or voting in the locality where they were living while
displaced, unless they forfeited their IDP status and associated
benefits. Also, less explicitly, IDPs were led to
believe that by exercising such rights in their place of
displacement, they risked forfeiting their right to return
and to regain their property in their place of origin; the
government and especially the Abkhaz government in
180 Quadripartite Agreement on Voluntary Return of Refugees
and Displaced Persons, 4 April 1994, Annex II to UN
Security Council Document, S/1994/397 (1994) (www.
unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,MULTILATERALTREATY,
GEO,,3ae6b31a90,0.html).