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GEORGIA DEBATES: WHO COMES FIRST -- IDPS OR STUDENTS?
Molly Corso 9/02/08

The Georgian school year could prove the latest casualty in the war over South Ossetia. Georgian officials are now grappling with a painful dilemma, as public schools in Tbilisi and elsewhere in Georgia are trying to figure out ways to accommodate both students and thousands of Internally Displaced Persons now living in the buildings.

Over 20,000 Georgians from villages destroyed during the war with Russia have taken shelter in over a hundred public schools in Tbilisi. Although Georgian schools are supposed to open by September 15, there is no official decision as yet about where to move these displaced persons.

That means that school principals and students alike are uncertain about when Georgia’s school year will actually start.

Ministry of Refugees and Accommodations spokesperson Maia Razmadze forecast that “in the next few days” the city of Tbilisi will take official responsibility for those individuals living in schools and move them to “other buildings” in the capital. The decision, taken “earlier this week,” should receive official approval by the beginning of next week, she added.

No one from the Tbilisi mayor’s office was available for comment.

But Deputy Education Minister Ana Zhvania stated that the situation is not so clear-cut. While the mayor’s office is technically in charge of relocating Tbilisi IDPs, there is “not a single approach” about how -- and when -- to clear out the schools, she said.

The government must deal with the schools on a “case by case” basis to accommodate the IDPs, Zhvania elaborated. On August 25, according to government numbers, there were nearly 50,000 people living in 195 public schools in Tbilisi, plus universities and vocational training centers. Now, fewer than 24,000 remain; however, out of those still living in the schools, an estimated 15,000 people have no viable alternative housing.

“We can’t vacate them immediately,” Zhvania said, adding that solving the problem is proving to be a management “headache.”

“We have to compromise and we have to find the compromise between the two things that we can’t sacrifice at all -- finding “comfortable” housing for the IDPs and getting students back to school,” she said.

Both tasks carry equal weight at this point, she continued. “Those who have been affected [by the war] should not receive a second trauma,” Zhvania said. “We have to do both.”

One solution under consideration would pair each district school with space for classes with another school in the same district that could serve as an IDP shelter. Affected children would attend classes in shifts at the functioning school.

While government officials are reportedly working on a plan to accommodate both students and IDPs, the situation on the ground has become increasingly stressful.

An estimated 200 refugees live in Public School No. 167 in the blue-collar Tbilisi suburb of Gldani. In discussions with EurasiaNet, families living in the school stated they had never seen the principal to discuss their situation. An unidentified woman, referenced only as “some woman,” comes around occasionally to say that they need to vacate the building so that classes can begin, the families said.

Neli Bokurashvili, a pensioner from the village of Kitsnisi, located north of Gori in a zone under Russian peacekeepers’ control, said she tried to go home after the fighting subsided, only to run back to Tbilisi the next day in fear for her life.

“We don’t have any protection or security. People [in the village] are living so poorly. They have no bread,” she said, adding that she is not prepared to live in a tent city now set up for IDPs in Gori. “Let them [officials] go to Gori and see what is happening. Then we will go.... we have no where [else] to go.”

IDPs like Bokurashvili came to Public School No. 167 “to get in out of the open sky” during the first chaotic days of the war. The school contains no kitchen facilities and no beds for new occupants; most residents sleep on tabletops and other makeshift cots. There is one functioning toilet, but no shower.

Deputy Education Minister Zhvania noted that people fleeing the fighting mostly followed their intuition as they desperately sought some sort of accommodation in the capital. “Unfortunately, Georgia has this experience ... for some of them it was a natural place,” she said in reference to Tbilisi. Many people, she added, simply set up house anywhere they could, “without asking anyone.”

At Public School No. 136 in Gldani, Principal Elza Badashvili is still uncertain about how 180 refugees ended up living in her facility. “I was not here,” Badashvili said. “Everything happened spontaneously.”

Now, Badashvili adds, the time is fast approaching for IDPs to leave the school. “The most important thing is that studies should start on September 15,” she concluded.

Editor’s Note: Molly Corso is a freelance reporter and photographer based in Tbilisi.

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

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