Today was the highlight of our SAIS MAGP international residency trip to Georgia. Georgian security services took a small group of Cohort IV on a trip north of Tbilisi to the administrative border with South Ossetia. Georgia considers this territory its own, but Russia has occupied it since 2008.
With Georgian police forces standing lookout, we managed to meet with a man on the other side of the border. He considers himself to be Georgian, but his home now lies on the other side of the security fence. He is caring for his ill wife himself because they lack access to a hospital. Neighbors whose homes happened to fall on the Georgian side of the border pass them food. He repeatedly told us he couldn’t go on much longer in these circumstances.
We then traveled to the nearby camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs). The IDPs were forced to leave their homes in South Ossetia when the Russian occupation began. Over 200 children live in the camp and their stunning art lined the walls of the community center.
We then met a political leader from the region as well as members of the IDP camp. The IDPs used to be allowed to travel across the border, but their access to South Ossetia was closed off last September. Most IDPs continue to have family members on the other side of the border.
While the IDPs at this camp consider themselves to be lucky – they have direct access to citizen services that the other camps in Georgia lack – they still want the occupation to end so they can go home to South Ossetia. Most have been in the camp for over ten years, but still feel as if they are living in a temporary situation.
Beyond wanting to be reunited with the family members and neighbors, they were eager for the international community to know more about who they are and about their daily struggles in Georgia’s contested regions.
-- Shauna S., Cohort 4