美国国家公共电台 NPR Uprooted By Conflict, Stuck In Limbo, Yearning For A Place To Call Home

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And we have heard the stories of refugees making long, often treacherous 1 journeys across oceans and continents to escape war at home. But here's a reality - most people displaced by conflict never even leave their own countries. Internally displaced people, or IDPs, rely on their governments for assistance. And for those governments, figuring out how to help and for how long is really complicated. That's certainly true in the Republic of Georgia, where conflicts have left 250,000 people displaced. Stephanie Joyce recently went to Georgia to learn about how a country manages this and what can go wrong.

STEPHANIE JOYCE, BYLINE 2: Earlier this year, I heard about a protest by some of those IDPs. News reports said they were on a hunger strike and had sewn their mouths shut. So I went to see them in Zugdidi, a city in western Georgia.

It turns out the protest is pretty small, just one makeshift tent set up across from a McDonald's on a busy street downtown. Inside, half a dozen people are lying around on beds watching TV. Dali Shonia is one of the protesters. Her lips are stitched together with a single loop of black thread, but it doesn't stop her from speaking.

DALI SHONIA: (Speaking Georgian).

JOYCE: "It's unfair that the government is giving apartments to people who don't need them but not to us," she says. The protest is over a Georgian government program to give housing to displaced people, like Shonia. She was forced to flee her home in the early 1990s during a war over the breakaway region of Abkhazia. That region remains 3 under the control of Russian-backed separatists. And more than two decades later, Shonia is still living in what was supposed to be a temporary shelter.

SHONIA: (Speaking Georgian).

JOYCE: "It's horrible," she says. In the last few years, the government has started relocating people from those shelters to more permanent housing. But according to the protesters, the system for deciding who gets housing first is unfair. They're hoping to get the attention of the ministry 4 of refugees. A handwritten sign pinned to the wall of the tent reads the hateful minister, Sozar Subari, of the MRA, should resign.

SHONIA: (Speaking Georgian).

JOYCE: Shonia says she won't stop protesting until the ministry gives her an apartment.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Speaking Georgian).

JOYCE: Another woman in the tent offers to show me a temporary shelter. It's a former hospital complex just behind us.

Let's go.

The doors to the hospital are long gone, and rain splashes through into the corridor. My tour guide points to a gaping 5 hole in the ceiling.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Speaking Georgian).

JOYCE: Oh, yeah. You can see up to the next floor. The ceiling's just literally 6 caving in.

That moment is repeated half a dozen times.

We're hopping 7 over a giant hole...

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Speaking Georgian).

JOYCE: ...In the floor.

Minutes later...

And that's a hole in the floor.

The building is clearly falling apart. So why aren't the people living here a higher priority for new housing? I head over to the regional office of the MRA, the ministry of refugees, to find out. It looks like any generic 8 government office. People are sitting on rows of plastic chairs in the waiting room. A ticker on the wall shows which number is up next. It's completely silent until my translator, Mariam Aduashvili, tells the security guard I'm an American journalist there to speak with the deputy minister. Suddenly, people are on their feet.

(CROSSTALK)

JOYCE: When the shouting subsides 9 a bit, Mariam explains why people were yelling at us.

MARIAM ADUASHVILI: The people are annoyed. Like, why did you come here? Like, you should go to the settlements and talk to the IDPs rather than come and talk to the representatives of MRA. They are not going to tell you the truth.

JOYCE: After a long wait, we're ushered 10 back to the deputy minister's office. Manuchar Chilachava sits behind his desk flanked by staffers. His answer for why the people protesting aren't eligible 11 for apartments...

MINISTER FOR INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS FROM THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, ACCOMMODATION AND REFUGEES MANUCHAR CHILACHAVA: (Speaking Georgian).

JOYCE: "Of course I understand the living conditions are bad," he says. "But Resolution 320 determines how the apartments will be distributed." His answer to the next question...

CHILACHAVA: (Speaking Georgian).

JOYCE: "We have to follow Resolution 320." Next question - Resolution 320.

Resolution 320 lays out the point system to determine who gets an apartment first - 3 points for those living in dugouts or stairwells, 3 points if a family member died in the war, 3 points for a family member with a disability. But how did this system come to exist in the first place? I decide to go to the top, the minister of refugees himself, the one who the protesters were calling on to resign.

I meet Sozar Subari at the agency's central office in Georgia's capital city, Tbilisi. On the day I visit, the commission that makes decisions about who gets apartments is meeting.

They're deciding who gets the flats in the Zugdidi?

MINISTER OF REFUGEES SOZAR SUBARI: Yeah, yeah.

JOYCE: Subari invites me to poke 12 my head into the room.

SUBARI: They have this list with the names of people.

JOYCE: Twenty or so people are sitting around a conference table with huge reams of paper in front of them, lists of the 4,000 applicants 13 for just 144 newly built apartments in Zugdidi. Projected at the front of the room are photos of the inside of someone's house. Subari explains they're verifying that people's living conditions are in fact as they say they are. But he concedes that it's a flawed process.

SUBARI: To say who is in the worst conditions - it's impossible because there is no clear border between them. Subari says he doesn't like the system but that short of people being allowed to return to their former homes, he doesn't see many options. But he does have a plan to change the government's relationship with IDPs.

SUBARI: My aim is that this ministry must be closed.

JOYCE: That's right. He plans to do away with the ministry of refugees. His vision is that once all displaced people have been given new housing, the ministry will no longer be necessary.

SUBARI: Governments help them one time, give them accommodation. They are now ordinary citizens. If they lost, they lost.

JOYCE: For Subari, ending government assistance for IDPs symbolizes 14 their reintegration into Georgian society. But for displaced people, finding a sense of home is about more than just getting a new apartment. For NPR News, I'm Stephanie Joyce.

(SOUNDBITE OF RRAREBEAR'S "STILL TIME")

GREENE: Stephanie Joyce is NPR's Above the Fray 15 fellow. That's an international reporting fellowship sponsored by the John Alexander Project.