Property Restitution Deal for South Ossetia

The Georgian authorities have come up with a piece of legislation designed to compensate people who lost property in the South Ossetian conflict 15 years ago. But although the plan has been deemed fair by Council of Europe experts, its fate is uncertain because the poor relationship between Georgian and South Ossetian leaders makes any issue highly contentious.



The law, still in draft, is intended to start a process where tens of thousands of people - Georgians and Ossetians alike - will be able to reclaim flats, houses, and other property lost in the short but bitter war of 1991-92, or else receive financial compensation.



In theory, the process could get under way this year. On March 17-18, the bill was approved by the European Commission for Democracy Through Law, better known as the Venice Commission, which is an advisory body to the Council of Europe, CoE, and is providing neutral oversight of the document’s legal provisions. Tbilisi accepted the amendments recommended by commission experts, so the law will soon be ready to go to the Georgian parliament.



But the draft has yet to be seen by the administration in South Ossetia, which has claimed independence since the conflict ended, though is not recognised by Georgia or other states. The potential beneficaries - people who fled on both sides - also remain largely unaware of its contents.



After brewing since 1989, the dispute over South Ossetia’s ambition to secede from Georgia spilled over into hostilities in 1991. Some 2,000 people died in the fighting and about 100,000 became refugees.



It was a traumatic time for everyone caught up in the conflict.



Liana Elbakidze, an Ossetian who worked as a teacher in the Kareli district (not part of South Ossetia), found her life and that of her husband and children were suddenly turned upside down.



"On February 25, 1991, we were forced to leave our home. We did not even have sufficient time to get anything together so we took just one bag of clothes," she recalled. "They came to our [Ossetian] neighbours even earlier, threatening to take their children away and taking their money and gold. One of our relatives was badly beaten up; we initially thought he was going to die."



Like many Ossetians from Georgia, Liana moved not to South Ossetia, but across the border into North Ossetia, which is part of the Russian Federation. Instead of teaching, she earns a living as market trader in the local capital Vladikavkaz and - a decade and a half on - is still living in a temporary centre set up to house the forced migrants.



Gia Gigauri, a Georgian from the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval (known as Tskhinvali in Georgian) who now lives in Tbilisi, was similarly uprooted from his home.



"We left in the winter of 1990, a snowy winter,” he recalled. “We could only take what we were able to carry.”



The way the Georgian restitution plan would work would be that anyone with a potential claim could submit it to a joint commission made up of Georgian and South Ossetian officials plus representatives of international organisations. The Venice Commission has suggested that the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, should play a central role, along with the European Union, the OSCE and the CoE.



The Georgians have offered to provide funding for the compensation scheme, although the Venice Commission believes international donors will probably have to come up with some of the money.



But would the refugees take up the offer of compensation – or even the chance of getting their homes back?



"Life is hard on the refugees... and they will return," said Giorgi Gogia of the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group. "Even if they come just to sell the homes that are returned to them, the very fact that their rights have been restored will help revive trust."



However, many of the refugees on both sides interviewed by IWPR appeared less upbeat that the plan will go well.



"I don’t believe the authorities in Tbilisi will return anything to us," said Liana Elbakidze in Vladikavkaz. "I’ve been back to the area district on many occasions over the years, but they’ve only ever tricked me – and threatened my husband."



Inessa Bolotayeva, an Ossetian who was displaced from the Georgian town of Gori and now lives in Tskhinval, is similarly pessimistic.



"The Georgians drove us out; they took our home and now they’re living in it themselves,” she said. “Yes, I have heard something about this law but we will definitely not go back there even if they give us big money. Sooner or later, they’d trouble us again.”



In his small Tbilisi flat, Gia Gigauri appeared hopeful, saying, "If it proves possible, my wife and I will definitely return to Tskhinvali."



The CoE experts identified a number of areas where the Georgian legislation could be worded more precisely, such as the criteria for awarding compensation and the scale of the money involved, and ways of differentiating between those people who owned their own homes and others who rented them from the state – a distinction which has proved a major bone of contention in Croatia, another state which has had to grapple with post-war restitution issues.



The experts also said the Georgian authorities appeared not to have assessed the likely scale of compensation - how many people would make a claim, and how much it would cost.



But these technical issues pale before the real obstacle to progress - the fact that the fundamental territorial dispute remains unresolved 15 years on, and that the two leaderships find it hard to agree on anything.



Georgian deputy justice minister Konstantine Vardzelashvili told IWPR that Tbilisi has repeatedly asked the South Ossetians to take part in drafting the law. "We first sent them a blueprint, then the draft itself,” he said. “We waited for a response, but it never came.”



South Ossetian leaders have so far refused to look at the bill.



"We do not intend to participate in drafting the laws of a different country," South Ossetia’s first deputy prime minister Boris Chochiev told IWPR.



But Chochiev did leave open a window for possible collaboration, saying that South Ossetian representatives might take part in reviewing the legislation in the capacity of “international experts".



Vardzelashvili said Georgia would continue taking the legislation forward, “Whether the de facto South Ossetian authorities want to cooperate with us or not."



As the Venice Commission experts noted, "Dialogue between the two sides to the conflict seems to be very limited."



The commission said there was a risk the South Ossetians would not cooperate if “serious efforts” were not made to consult them. But it added, "On the other hand, a refusal to co-operate by one side should not be a reason to delay rehabilitation and restitution for the benefit of the victims of the conflict."



The often-fierce nature of the wider political discourse between the two sides - and Moscow as well - is not conducive to a calm discussion about property restitution.



Georgia’s relationship with Russia has gravely deteriorated over the last six months. As part of the war of words about political and economic differences, there has been more discussion of a long-mooted plan under which South Ossetia would join its North Ossetian neighbours to become an integral part of Russia - a territorial change which Tbilisi will not countenance.



On March 22, South Ossetian president Eduard Kokoiti announced that his territory planned to bring a legal action - based on a treaty dating from 1774 - claiming that it rightfully belongs to Russia.



Georgia’s parliament, meanwhile, has focused on seeking damages from Moscow which it claims has illegally supported the separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In a resolution passed on March 17, lawmakers demanded that the cost be reckoned up.



A more positive step forward is set to take place at a meeting in Vladikavkaz on March 30-31, at which representatives from both sides will sit down to discuss the question of compensation.



"Everyone will participate in the meeting as private persons irrespective of their official positions," said Oksana Antonenko, director of Russia and Eurasia programmes for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, which is behind the meeting.



The aim is for the Georgians and South Ossetians to each get an idea of the other’s vision of what the problem is, and to talk about what they would each consider to be fair compensation, Antonenko told IWPR, adding, "There are very few people today who know who should receive compensation, what their sentiments are, who is ready to return and who is not, and what demands they have…. there has been no dialogue with the refugees."



According to Paata Zakareishvili, a well-known Georgian political analyst, the main thing is to get the process rolling and address the South Ossetians’ lingering mistrust.



“The future will show the results,” he said. “Restitution is an obligation and a question of dignity for us."



Victoria Gujelashvili is a freelance journalist in Tbilisi. Independent journalists Irina Kelekhsayeva in Tskhinval and Alan Tskhurbayev in Vladikavkaz also contributed material for this article.