From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

Georgia From Solidarity to Solutions: The Government Response to Internal Displacement in Georgia
Russian Federation. In addition, since the August 2008
conflict, they have barred UNHCR and OSCE (whose
presence in Georgia was terminated in June 2009 due
to Russia’s veto of the proposed renewal of their mission)
from reestablishing their long-standing presence
in South Ossetia; human rights observers seeking to investigate
claims of abuse and violations of international
law also have been barred. 253 Abkhazian authorities, for
their part, terminated the the UN Observer Mission in
Georgia in June 2009, following the Russian Federation’s
veto in the UN Security Council of a resolution to extend
the mission’s mandate. While UNHCR and a handful of
international NGOs have continued to carry out humanitarian
activities in Abkhazia and the UN Security
Council has called on all parties to facilitate humanitarian
access to persons affected by the conflict, “including
refuges and internally displaced persons,” 254 UNHCR
noted at the end of 2010 that “it is becoming increasingly
more difficult and complex to operate in Abkhazia.” 255
Meanwhile, in South Ossetia, UNHCR reported that
humanitarian access to some 14,000 IDPs and returnees
in South Ossetia “remains impossible.” 256 Indeed, with
the exception of the International Committee of the Red
Cross, international humanitarian agencies still did not
have access to South Ossetia by August 2011, three years
after the war.
253 US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human
Rights and Labor, 2009 Human Rights Report: Georgia, 11
March 2010, Sec. 1 (g) (www.state.gov).
254 UN Security Council Resolution 1866, adopted on 13
February 2009.
255 UNHCR, “Georgia,” UNHCR Global Appeal 2011 Update,
2010, p. 255 (www.unhcr.org/4cd970e69.html).
256 Ibid.
229
Acknowledgments
Erin Mooney is grateful to the following people
for responding to research questions, reviewing
sections of the draft text, or otherwise providing
information taken into account in the preparation
of the Georgia study: Valerian Kopaleishvili, Head
of the Administrative Department and Manager
of the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons
from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation
and Refugees (MRA)–Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Joint Project in the MRA; Medea Gugeshashvili,
Coordination Unit of the MRA; Julia Kharashvili,
Cofounder of the IDP Women’s Association and
former (until February 2011) adviser in the MRA;
Tina Gewis and Dima Zviadadze, of the Norwegian
Refugee Council (NRC), Georgia; Danijela Popovic
of UNHCR, Georgia; Sabrina Büchler, Human
Rights Adviser to the Commissioner for Human
Rights, Council of Europe, Georgia; Lasha Gogidze
and Caitlin Ryan of Transparency International,
Georgia; Guy Hovey, co-leader (with the author) of
the USAID-FORECAST technical assistance project
on IDPs to the MRA (2009-10); Jamie McGoldrick,
UN Resident Coordinator and United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) Resident
Representative in Georgia; and Nadine Walicki of
the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center of
NRC, Switzerland.