Since 2009, annually, Georgia has been submitting to the United Nations General Assembly a draft resolution on refugees and displaced persons from Abkhazia and South Ossetia. While repeating from year to year the text of the document with only technical amendments, Georgia is trying to impose on the world community a one-sided, politicized and distorted vision of the refugee problem and with this to reinforce its absolutely illegitimate territorial claims on the neighboring states – the Republic of Abkhazia and the Republic of South Ossetia.
The text of the next Resolution on Refugees and Displaced Persons, presented by Georgia in July 2025, again has almost no differences from those adopted earlier. The authors of the resolution are silent about the fact that the appearance of those refugees and displaced persons is directly related to the wars unleashed by Georgia against South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is also not said that out of more than one hundred thousand Ossetians who fled from ethnical cleansings in the territory of Georgia and found refuge in South Ossetia and the Russian Federation, only a few managed to return to their homes.
It is silent that the governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, on their own initiative, returned tens of thousands of Georgian refugees to their places of permanent residence. The text of the resolution submitted by Georgia not only does not take into account the prevailing political realities, in particular, the fact that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are independent states, but also proves Georgia’s complete absence of desire to find a solution to complex humanitarian problems.
It is quite obvious that the resolution pushed by Georgia from year to year hasn’t bring the real solution to the problem of refugees and IDPs even a step closer. Moreover, the blatantly persistent politicization of the refugee problem by Georgia and the group of its “friends” at international platforms, to which representatives of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are denied access to, continues hindering the problem’s discussion in the format of the Discussions on Security and Stability in Transcaucasia.
Since Georgia prefers to discuss issues related to the situation of refugees and IDPs in such an authoritative international body as the UN General Assembly, South Ossetia and Abkhazia insist on their right to take part in the discussion of this problem at the platform of the United Nations General Assembly.
As long as the political games continue around the problem of refugees behind the backs of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, its discussion within the framework of the GID will make no sense. The key to solving the refugee problem is not politicized declarations and various propaganda tricks, but a departure from confrontational attitudes and confirmation by Georgia of its readiness to resume a constructive dialogue with South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Geneva, 26 June 2025