Seventeen-year-old Ketevan, an Internally Displaced Person from the breakaway region of Abkhazia, has little reason to celebrate the holidays this year. Along with hundreds of other Georgian IDP families, Ketevan and her family face eviction from a temporary shelter in Tbilisi after January 1.
The Georgian Ministry for Refugees and Accommodation maintains that the evictions are part of the government’s ongoing attempt to provide “durable solutions” for families who lost their houses in Georgia’s post-Soviet conflicts.
In reality, though, the policy appears often to be creating fear, confusion and anger for IDPs who still lack permanent housing.
The 36 temporary shelters affected by the evictions are government-owned buildings – office buildings or former schools – that were used to accommodate IDPs from the 2008 conflict with Russia. Officially, the evictions involve only these IDPs.
But the shelters also contain IDPs from the wars in the early 1990s with Abkhaz and South Ossetian separatists, as well as some individuals who simply want a free place to live.
Similarly, treatment of the 604 families to be moved out of the shelters is not one-and-the-same. Depending on their status, some will simply be evicted, others will be relocated to government-provided housing and a minority may receive $10,000 in compensation.
In Ketevan’s 33-family building, for instance, 17 families will simply be evicted, 12 families will be relocated and four families will receive monetary compensation.
Relocated IDP families will be moved to seven settlements, most located in the rural, western region of Samegrelo. Unemployment is higher in the regions than outside of the capital, and IDPs with jobs in Tbilisi fear they will be left without the means to care for themselves.
There are also security concerns. One of the government-provided IDP settlements on the list, Potskhoetseri, is near the de facto border with Abkhazia, a fact that holds deep significance for IDPs from the contested territory. They fear that, if there is a new conflict, they will be forced to flee again.
“What is more important for them, a building or a person?” asked Sveta, a middle-aged IDP from Abkhazia’s Upper Kodori Gorge. “It is shameful what they are doing. They are driving us into the arms of the Russians.”
In November, one IDP woman set herself on fire over the evictions; she later died from her burns at a Tbilisi hospital.
The government maintains, however, that existing social welfare programs would provide a safety net for evicted IDPs.
Those families who face eviction and are IDPs from the 2008 war may be able to qualify for $10,000 in monetary compensation if they choose not to move into government-provided housing.
The prospect of yet another move, however, is what many find daunting.
After years of shuffling from one place to another throughout the city, Kakha, a middle-aged disabled veteran from the Abkhaz war, and his wife decided to put down roots in the shelter that houses Ketevan and her family. They installed plumbing, built a bathroom, laid new floors, built new doors, and put up dainty, hand-made wooden curtain rods. Now they will have to start over from scratch.
The evictions, planned for “after mid-January” 2011, are not the first, however. In August, some 874 families were either evicted or relocated from similar makeshift facilities in Tbilisi, a process that elicited an international outcry because the ministry did not, in many cases, inform the families in advance that they would be moved.
Sophio Benashvili, the deputy head of the justice department at the Public Defender’s Office, which has been monitoring the IDP relocation process, maintains that while the ministry has improved the eviction process, the overall procedure lacks clarity.
“The sakrebulo [city council], city hall, parliament or some ministries have no clear information about what is going on in this picture,” Benashvili said. “ They [the Ministry for Refugees and Accommodation] can be more open and more transparent.”
Although the ministry asserts that there are hotlines and information centers to field questions from IDPs, individuals who face eviction seem to have little information about what to expect.
Half a dozen families interviewed by EurasiaNet.org were initially informed about the eviction on December 13. Ten days later, they did not know when they were to be evicted, who was eligible for relocation, where they would go, who would coordinate the process or whom to contact with questions and complaints.
The questions also extend to what facilities are within range of the new settlements. The Public Defender’s Office’s Benashvili maintains that ensuring IDPs have access to schools, hospitals and employment is more important than making sure the settlements’ constructions are up to par.
“I think it is more important . . .for IDPs to have an income… than a rehabilitated building,” she said.
One IDP agrees. If the government does not provide the means for IDP families from Abkhazia to feed themselves, the families will have no choice but to return to separatist Abkhazia, said the man, who gave his name as Mizer. “That is the only other alternative,” he said.
The Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation reports that it will start planning for employment programs in 2011.
But for IDPs waiting to hear their fate, the future bears less interest than the immediate present.
“Women are crying bitterly” over the evictions, commented Gulimze, a pensioner who fled Abkhazia in the early 1990s. “What kind of holiday is it?”
Editor's note:
Molly Corso is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi.
