South Ossetia and Abkhazia insist on their right to take part in the discussion of the problems of refugees within the walls of the UN. This is stated in the comments of the RSO delegation in the Geneva international discussions in connection with the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the resolution on the situation of internally displaced persons and refugees from South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
On June 7, 2023, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution prepared by Georgia on the situation of internally displaced persons and refugees from South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The South Ossetian party has emphasized that as long as political games around the problem of refugees continue behind the backs of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the discussion of this problem within the framework of the Geneva discussions will not make any sense.
Members of the delegation noted that the Georgian delegate presenting the draft resolution had stated that the draft resolution was "of a purely humanitarian nature" to "avoid any political speculation when the fundamental rights of displaced persons are at stake."
“However, for those who know the real history of the events following which this text was first presented, it is obvious that the annual ritual of putting forward a draft resolution on refugees, organized by Georgia on the UN platform since September 9, 2009, is nothing more than another act of a recurring political farce," the comment says.
Representatives of a number of countries, who spoke after the Georgian delegate, readily took advantage of the discussion of the draft for regular aggressive attacks and absurd accusations against the Russian Federation and the Republic of South Ossetia. Judging by these statements, it is quite obvious that the problem of refugees is of last interest to their authors, as, in fact, to the authors of the Georgian project.
“Of course, in the speeches and in the text of the resolution there were words about the rights of “forcibly displaced persons”, primarily “the right to a voluntary, safe and dignified return”, “respect for human rights” and other familiar formulas from the phraseological dictionary of international humanitarian law, which mask a number of theses of the Georgian political propaganda, leading to the idea that Georgia is an innocent victim of "violent change in the demographic situation," members of the South Ossetian delegation have noted.
The poorly concealed goal of this unpretentious trick, according to them, under the pretext of caring for refugees, is to gain support for Georgia's claims to jurisdiction over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, to accuse Russia of "occupation" and "aggression".
“Of course, not a single word mentions that the “change in the demographic situation” and the flows of refugees were caused by the armed aggression of Georgia against South Ossetia and Abkhazia; nothing is said in the resolution about ethnic cleansing of the Ossetian population, nor is it said about the genocide of the Ossetians. It is not said that the number of Ossetian refugees is several times higher than the number of ethnic Georgians who lived in South Ossetia and left for Georgia from South Ossetia before the start of the invasion of the Georgian army. There is not a word about the war crimes committed by the Georgian army and militants of various Georgian formations,” the commentary says.
Did the delegates who voted in favor of the Georgian project know what is behind the set of words they support, -the South Ossetian party wonders.
“Of course, some of the delegates could be quite aware, but were forced to proceed from the position of their governments. The other part also definitely knew and would have been more restrained in supporting the draft Georgian resolution, if not for the obvious pressure from a group of Western partners of Georgia,” they noted.
But the General Assembly was also attended by delegates who simply had no idea about the essence of the problem to which the resolution was devoted.
“It would be really important for them to listen to the alternative point of view, as is usually practiced in the UN, however, the Ossetian and Abkhaz representatives were always met with embarrassed silence or vague promises to "work out the issue," the RSO delegation said in the comment.
Behind the double standards applied in relation to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, on the one hand, and Georgia, on the other, one sees another confirmation of the crisis state of the system of international relations, but this does not make it any easier for the refugees, whom the authors of the resolution allegedly care about, the South Ossetian party has stressed.
South Ossetia reiterates that the only platform where it is possible to discuss and search for solutions to the problem of refugees and other categories of displaced persons with the participation of all interested parties is the Geneva International Discussions, where the problem of refugees was initially discussed in accordance with the agreements of September 12, 2008.
“Moreover, refugees began to return to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. However, Georgia decided to politicize the refugee problem, use it to promote its own propaganda, to mislead the world community and take political revenge for the failure of the Saakashvili regime's military adventure,” the members of the delegation added.
In September 2009, for the first time, Georgia submitted its draft resolution on refugees to the General Assembly, which was reasonably perceived in Tskhinval and Sukhum as an unscrupulous and dishonest attempt to exert gross political pressure on the Ossetian and Abkhaz parties.
Consideration of the refugee problem had to be postponed until Georgia made a choice in favor of common sense between organizing performances on the stage of international organizations and practical discussion of the refugee problem in its humanitarian aspect.
Ossetian and Abkhaz representatives have repeatedly stated that Georgia's politicization of the refugee problem undermines the work on this issue within the framework of the Geneva discussions.
