Starting Over With New Homes: Special Challenges IDPs Face
Motley robe de chamber and dark blue threadbare trousers flap in the wind, hung on a string tied to two canes that stand about five feet apart. Izolda Gundishvili sits beneath one of the canes in the shadow of her new one-room cottage. The 67-year-old looks into the distance, past the plumes of smoke rising from her kitchen where beans feverishly boil.
It’s difficult to get Izolda to talk about the things she left in Kemerti when fleeing in August 2008 and what life is like without the village. Perhaps there is a degree of modesty that stops her from expressing the hardships that come with being an IDP – a resident of the new settlement of Berbuki, in the Gori district. 134 families residing in about ten identical rows of white cement houses broken up by patches of gardens and the occasional hen pen are struggling to meet their daily needs.
"We are farmers," Izolda Gundishvili says. "Together with my husband I used to cultivate land and grow apples and vegetables, which were easy to sell in the North Caucasus. We also had cows and a chicken farm. All that was more than enough for our family. But now you see where I am – living on barren land, in a tiny cottage. No jobs for me and my husband, no perspectives.”
Like many in this settlement, Izolda and her husband Ushangi have no reliable sources of income. On a lucky day, her son and his wife find temporary work, but that does not happen often. Izolda and her husband get 56 GEL (approx. $33) of social assistance but this barely pays for their needs. While they can access health services, they are often unable to afford essential medicine. Many IDPs only have a 28 lari (approximately $17) Government payment as monthly income along with humanitarian aid rations of macaroni, flour, oil, sugar and salt. Since the 2008 war, nearly 21,000 IDPs have been resettled in 36 new villages like Berbuki or in renovated apartment buildings, according to the Ministry of Refugees and Accommodation.
When they have an opportunity IDP villages cite the lack of job opportunities as the main problem which they need NGO and Government support to address. “We have to get up from the ‘warm bed’ of humanitarian aid and learn how to rebuild our lives in this new environment. But if there isn’t external support I doubt we will manage that,” says Ushangi Kaulashvili, Izolda’s husband, who suffered physical trauma in the August 2008 war, though he claims he will do any type of work to earn a living.
"Certainty, the employment problem is the most important. However, we should not disregard the integration issue, which has already emerged between new settlement residents and neighbouring rural communities," commented Vakhtang Piranishvili of CARE International in the Caucasus. Within its Stabilisation and Integration of IDPs into Mainstream Georgian Society (SIIMS) Programme CARE will focus on creating socio-economic ties between the local communities and the IDPs, through encouraging the employment of IDPs by local businesses and investments in IDP settlements.
According to Vakhtang Piranishvili, the SIIMS Director, the project addresses existing and new integration issues amongst 10,000 "new" IDPs residing in Shida Kartli and Kvemo Kartli settlements and is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the total budget of NOK 19,000,000 (2.9 Million USD).
“We have grouped the series of activities into five thematic areas of intervention: income generation, infrastructure development, information sharing and cooperation with local government, civil society strengthening, psycho-social support and capacity building. In addition, we also aim to finance women business start-ups,” he said. But until the project kicks off and helps the new villagers to help themselves, women like Izolda and men like Ushangi will have to rely only on humanitarian aid that meets less than their basic needs.
