RUSSIA GRABS 20% OF GEORGIA - Support for the 220,000 Displaced

Since April 2008, over 220,000 registered Internally Displaced People (“IDPs”) have been living in limbo in Georgia for more than 20 years. These people fled secessionist conflicts in the two break-away regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the early 1990s. The second wave of displacement swept over Georgia in 2008 as war broke out between Russian and Georgian troops over South Ossetia. According to The UN Refugee Agency (“UNHCR”) the majority of those people from Abkhazia live in regions bordering Abkhazia while IDPs from South Ossetia live in Gori, which lies between Tbilisi, and South Ossetia. About 44 % of these IDPs live in state-owned collective centers, which were not constructed to provide long-term accommodation. The remaining IDPs live in the private sector with relatives or friends, in rental properties or have purchased their own homes. The affected people from Russia ‘land grab’ are over-proportionally represented among the approximately 11.3 % of the population which continues to live below the poverty line.

The result of armed confrontation is always human tragedy. After fighting has ended there is a sad record of killings and other losses, of intense suffering, of dreams and hopes that were shattered, in many cases forever. We do not know of any better way to understand the root causes of the Russian-Georgian conflict than through the minds of those who had suffered.

In June 2018, Inti Raymi Fund team visited the proud yet small and vulnerably located country of Georgia at the intersection of Europe and Asia, a former Soviet republic that’s home to Caucasus Mountain villages and Black Sea beaches. Depending upon your time horizon, Georgia has a 5,000+ year history, steeped with conflicts with its’ three geographical neighbors, Russia on the north, Turkey on the east and Iran to the south.  Without going back millenniums or even centuries, we discovered that Russia as recently as 1991 and again in 2008 aggressively invaded and seized two significant regions of Georgia which Russia militarily occupies today.  These enormous land grabs of two regions known as Abkhazia and South Ossetia caused the displacement of roughly 223,000 People. The focus of IRF team during our visit was to travel throughout the Georgian cities of Gori, Kutaisi and Zugdidi visiting with as many affected people from Russia ‘Land Grab’ as possible to hear their stories as well as to see for ourselves these “taken and occupied territories”.

Georgia refuses to accept these territorial losses of their country, because this would be accepting defeat, conversely, Russia has already put these new regions on all of their maps and has already built military fortifications in these regions intending to keep these lands for Mother Russia. A brief summary of the regional history can be studied at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Georgia_(country).

Giving recent history of Russia seizing three enormous regions of Ukraine in 2014 and beyond called Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, it is shocking to contemplate what regions or states will be next by the modern aggressions of Russia?  These land grabs in Ukraine and Georgia are almost identical in approach using propaganda and Russian so-called “passportization” policy, meaning the mass conferral of Russian citizenship and consequently passports to persons living in South Ossetia and Abkhazia used as stalking-horses to stoke tensions, false mis-information, camouflaged ground conflicts then all out military and tank invasions immediately following aerial bombardments and war.  The news calls this an incursion, but ask 230,000 internally displaced people what they call it.  You can research for yourself or view a brief summary at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27308526 and read our project in Ukraine: https://intiraymifund.org/maidan-square-protests-journalist-support-to-correct-war-propaganda/.  

Given the shear magnitude of 220,000+ people affected from the war, the Inti Raymi Fund’s goal was to help as best we could and to spread awareness of what we observed and learned in Georgia in hopes of more global awareness.  Accordingly, the IRF teamed up with Charity Humanitarian Centre “Abkhazeti” (“CHCA”). 

CHCA established in 1995, is a Georgian, non-Governmental, non-profit organization that aims to improve the livelihoods of conflict-affected and other socially vulnerable persons and enhance their social and economic integration. Formed in response to the thousands of Georgian IDPs created by violent conflict with the region of Abkhazia

Our main objective was to respectfully provide financial support to a community of affected people residing in the town of Zugdidi where 76.1% of Georgia IDPs live today. This group consists of 22 women and on man.

In partnership with CHCA and in our typical approach we asked the community…” what do you need?” and “How can we help?”  The community is now in the process of gathering consensus to move forwards with budgeting and execution of their programs.  As additional information becomes available, we will be updating this section of our report.