September 2009 FACT SHEET ON THE REPUBLIC OF ABKHAZIA’S REFUGEE PROGRAM The article in PDF can be downloaded by clicking here (61.1 Kb) Since the 1992-93 Georgian - Abkhazian war, more than 60,000 refugees have been successfully resettled in Abkhazia, which represents the largest peaceful resettlement program in modern times. This has occurred in spite of an ongoing campaign by the Georgian government to politicize the refugee process by provoking ethnic tensions, creating impediments to the safe return of refugees and establishing legal and diplomatic barriers to an international resolution.  The following points are designed to provide background on the refugee situation in Abkhazia.

• WHY HAVE SO MANY PEOPLE FLED ABKHAZIA?
  During the 1992-93 war, Georgian troops launched a massive attack on the civilian population of Abkhazia, destroying schools, hospitals, cultural relics and government buildings. This attack, which was aimed at annihilating the Abkhazian population and bringing the territory firmly under Georgian control, caused a massive exodus. More than 500 villages were destroyed. Though the Abkhazians successfully fought off Georgian attackers, the conflict did not end. In the decades following, Georgia repeatedly tried to destabilize Abkhazia, launching military incursions in 1998, 2001 and August 2006. Each conflict triggered another outflow of refugees.
  
  
• HOW MANY REFUGEES HAVE BEEN FORCED TO LEAVE ABKHAZIA?
  Since the 1992-93 war, an estimated 190,000 refugees have left Abkhazia. They included Abkhazians, Georgians, Mingrelians, Greeks, Jews and Russians.
  
  
• HOW MANY REFUGEES HAVE RETURNED?
  The largest concentration of Georgians within Abkhazia was in the Gal region.  Since the war, more than 52,000 refugees have returned to Gal.  In addition, at least 15,000 Georgians have returned to other regions of Abkhazia.  Claims by the Georgian government that there are more than 500,000 refugees still displaced from their homes are absurd.
  
  
• WHAT RIGHTS DO GEORGIAN RETURNEES HAVE?
  Under Abkhazian law, citizens are treated equally regardless of race, nationality, sex or religion.
  
  
• DO RESIDENTS OF GAL HAVE ANY SPECIAL RIGHTS?
  To assist the residents of Gal in their resettlement, the government of Abkhazia has provided them with some special privileges. They include an exemption from compulsory military service, free emergency medical care, Georgian-language schools, scholarships for higher education and small business assistance.
  
  
• ARE GEORGIANS FORCED TO TAKE ABKHAZIAN PASSPORTS TO LIVE IN ABKHAZIA?
  The identity documents valid for residency in Abkhazia include the following: passports from Abkhazia or the Russia Federation or an identity document known as Form 9.  An identity document is required to hold a job, purchase real estate, enroll children in school and receive medical care.  According to the Gal administration, 1,642 Georgian residents of Gal have applied for and received Abkhazian passports. Reports that Georgians have been forced to take Abkhazian passports are untrue.
  
  
• WHY HAS THE ABKHAZIAN GOVERNMENT REFUSED TO ALLOW GEORGIAN REFUGEES BACK TO THEIR HOMES IN EASTERN ABKHAZIA?
  The Abkhazian government has not prevented refugees from returning, and to the contrary, has overseen the largest peaceful resettlement of refugees in history.  However, to ensure the safety and economic security of its population, the Abkhazian government insists that certain preconditions be met before it opens its door to thousands of additional people. Those conditions include a Georgian pledge of non-violence and an independent assessment of the current refugee situation in Abkhazia, including a full accounting of all refugees resettled to date.
  
  
• ARE THERE ANY REFUGEES WHO HAVE NOT BEEN ALLOWED TO RETURN?
  The Abkhazian government maintains the right to prosecute any citizens who have participated in subversive activities, such as armed attacks or kidnappings.  The government has a list of people accused of those activities and they will be arrested and prosecuted if they return to Abkhazian territory. Since August 2008, five people have been killed and more than 10 injured as a result of terrorist attacks involving Georgians.
  
  
• HOW HAS THE GEORGIAN GOVERNMENT IMPEDEDTHE SUCCESSFUL RESOLUTION OF THE REFUGEE PROBLEM?
  To begin with, Georgia’s government is responsible for creating the refugee problem by its repeated and unsuccessful efforts to retake its former territories in Abkhazia and South Ossetia by force.  Georgia’s leaders have attempted to sabotage the resettlement process by supporting subversive activities inside Gal and harassing and intimidating Georgians who have chosen to return to Abkhazia.  Georgia has also demanded that international groups freeze economic development and social programs in Abkhazia and South Ossetia or risk prosecution under Georgian law. Georgia adopted a law that makes it a crime for representatives of international organizations to enter Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These laws have forced international groups to make a choice between working in Abkhazia or Georgia.  Finally, economic sanctions imposed by Georgia, and supported by its Western backers, have made it difficult for Abkhazia to obtain the necessary funding needed to implement a successful refugee resettlement program. 
  
  

From Abkhaz World:

Over the years since the end of the war in Abkhazia on 30 September 1993 and the flight of most of the former Kartvelian population from the region, various figures for the refugees resident in Georgia have been cited by different organisations and commentators. Please see below a selection of these figures along with the relevant source.

Graphic:  Demographic change in Abkhazia 1897–1989 - Conciliation Resources

RANDOM

Appendix:

• Georgian population fled before Abkhaz Army entered the occupied territories: See UNPO's report: <THE MAJORITY OF GEORGIANS, HOWEVER, FLED BEFORE ABKHAZIAN AND NORTHERN CAUCASUS TROOPS ARRIVED.>
  http://www.unpo.org/downloads/Abkhazia_Georgia_report_1992.pdf
  
  
• Abkhazia unilaterally decided to open the gates for the (largely Mingrelian) refugees to return to Abkhazia from Georgia in 1999. Georgia at that time was actually accusing these refugees of being TRAITORS to Georgia. 
  
  
• When most of Abkhazia was denuded of its native population in the wake of (a) the end of the Great Caucasian War in 1864 and (b) the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the question arose as to who would make the most appropriate substitute-population. One of the leading Georgian intellectuals of the time, the educationalist Iakob Gogebashvili, wrote an interesting article in Tiflisskij Vestnik in 1877 entitled /vin unda iknes dasaxlebuli apxazetshi?/ (Who should be settled in Abkhazia?). In this article he argued that the neighbouring Mingrelians would make the best /kolonizatorebi/ (colonisers)... And this is precisely what they subsequently became.
  
  It was no accident that the Georgian newspaper ‘Shroma’ considered Georgian acquisition of the land in Abkhazia and Circassia as ‘one of the most wonderful events’ in the life of the Georgian nation ['Shroma', 1882, №15 (in Georgian)]. On 4 February 1879 another newspaper, the ‘Droeba’, urged its readers: ‘Let us expand while there is still time to do it, before other peoples come and settle the empty spaces of our Caucasus.’ While the aforementioned issue of ‘Shroma’ pleaded with its readers: ‘Send us lots of Rachintsy, Lechkhumtsians, Upper Imeretians and Mingrelians from our mountainous regions!’ ['Shroma', 1882, №15 (in Georgian)].
  
  The mass-immigration of Kartvelians (mostly Mingrelians) goes back to the late 1930s. Abkhaz's script was then altered from a roman to a Georgian base. Abkhaz-language schools were summarily closed in 1945-6, following by a ban on broadcasting and publications. The Abkhazians as a nation were due to face transportation (like the numerous other peoples transported by Stalin from the Koreans in the late 1930s through to Abkhazia's Greeks in the late 1940s), and, as a 'scholarly' justification for that, the literary-historian Pavle Ingoroqva was commissioned to argue in print that the Abkhazians only arrived in Abkhazia in the 17th century, conquering the 'original' Abkhazians of history, who were thus a 'Georgian' tribe. This calumny was revived in the heady days of Georgian nationalism from 1988 AND IS WIDELY BELIEVED BY MANY ORDINARY KARTVELIANS, who for this reason still regard the Abkhazians as unentitled to be living in Abkhazia. (Demographic Change in Abkhazia)
  
  
• An excerpt from George Hewitt's reply to Svante E. Cornell.
  
  <...Contrary to various misinformed reports, Abkhazia did not declare independence from Georgia either before, during, or upon its victory in, the war. Throughout years of negotiations, Abkhazia was willing to contemplate making a concession and to enter confederal relations with Georgia. And let it not be forgotten that for most of the 1990s, especially when Shevardnadze-protegé Andrej Kozyrev served as Boris Yeltsin’s Foreign Minister, Russia’s policy was by no means pro-Abkhazian, a CIS-blockade being imposed along Abkhazia’s River Psou border with Russia. But let us see what I had to say on this matter in my earlier review: ‘Abkhazia did not formally declare independence until 12 October 1999. And this was in large measure the result of frustration at continuing bad faith on the part of Tbilisi in post-war negotiations. Pace Cornell (p.192), it has not been the Abkhazians who have refused to compromise — one might say that after their military victory, they were fully entitled to declare independence at once (September 1993), and yet they continued to pursue federative possibilities, whilst all that Georgia has offered is a return to the status quo ante bellum (some compromise from Georgia!). After protracted talks and constant last-minute revisions by Georgia a Protocol was ready for presidential signing in summer 1997, and yet at the last minute Tbilisi (not Sukhum) refused (Abkhazian Foreign Ministry Document 325, 25 Dec 1997). Such petty obstructionism continues, for in February 2001 Georgia's UN Ambassador, P’et’re Chkheidze, refused to sign two draft-documents, claiming them “unacceptable for the government of Georgia” — as the respected commentator, Liz Fuller, noted in her Radio Liberty report (4.5, 2 Feb 2001): “Chkheidze's criticism is surprising as the versions of both drafts currently under discussion were proposed by the Georgian side”.’> 
  
  
• The Georgian general leading the invading forces in the autumn of 1992, Giorgi (Gia) Karkarashvili, stated on TV that he would sacrifice 100,000 Georgians to kill ALL 97,000 Abkhazians, if that is what it took to keep Georgia's borders inviolate.
  
  See: VIDEO: Gia Karkarashvili, the Georgian Commander-in-Chief on TV threatens the Abkhazian nation with genocide (YouTube)
  
  A similar threat came from the head of Georgia's wartime administration, Giorgi Khaindrava, on the pages of Le Monde Diplomatique in April 1993. Goga (Giorgi) Khaindrava, told the correspondent from Le Monde Diplomatique that "there are only 80,000 Abkhazians, which means that we can easily and completely destroy the genetic stock of their nation by killing 15,000 of their youth. And we are perfectly capable of doing this."