Russia’s Foreign Ministry says that voting on the refugee issue at the session of the UN General Assembly in New York makes the situation in the Caucasus far more difficult.
The initiator of the resolution “On the status of refugees and forcefully displaced persons from Abkhazia and the Tskhinval Region” was Georgia. The document says that refugees have the right to return to their homeland and that they have the right to claim lost property. However, one can see far-reaching political issues behind the humanitarian aspects, that is, reconsidering the realities that emerged in Transcaucasia after the armed conflict of August 2008. It was exactly at that time that after repulsing Georgia’s aggression, two republics - South Ossetia and Abkhazia - declared their independence, which was recognized by Russia and by several other states.
The Deputy Director of the Strategic Culture Foundation Andrei Arishev says:
"The issue concerning the return of the refugees, from the point of view of Georgian diplomats, is only the first step. Probably, later the discussion of the other topics, dealing with what official Tbilisi calls the restoration of the “territorial integrity of the Republic of Georgia” will start. But the security problem entails not only the return of the refugees and forcefully displaced persons, which under the existing conditions seems to be almost unrealistic. The issue concerning the signing of a legally mandatory agreement on the non-use of force by Georgia against its two former autonomies is being discussed at the Geneva consultations on security in the Caucasus too."
However, Georgia refuses to sign such a document. And without this the discussion of other problems has no sense.
The Geneva consultations are the only format, enabling the representatives of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Georgia to exchange opinions and to search for common ground, including that on humanitarian issues. It is rather doubtful though that the involvement of the United Nations in this process will promote the strengthening of confidence between the conflicting sides. And it is very unlikely that any attempt to impose unacceptable decisions on the two young Caucasus republics will prove productive.
Let’s quote here a statement the Abkhazian Prime Minister Sergei Shamba made in an interview for the “Ekho Kavkaza” radio recently that any return of the refugees ahead of the signing of a peace treaty is out of the question. According to Shamba, earlier Abkhazia agreed to the return of 50,000 people but its gesture was not praised.
In this sense, the United Nations resolution is unlikely to change anything. As you might remember, such documents are actually none other than recommendations. This resolution was supported only by 50 states, while 86 preferred to abstain from voting, and 17 countries voted against it. Therefore, we can’t speak here about the unanimous support of the Georgian initiative.
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