By Liz Fuller

A four-day seminar on interethnic relations took place in Tbilisi recently, marking the launch of a two-year project sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) High Commissioner on National Minorities and intended primarily to improve the situation of the predominantly Armenian population of Georgia's southern region of Djavakheti, Caucasus Press reported on 15 February. A seminar on minority rights organized by the Council of Europe was held almost simultaneously. And on 15 February, Elene Tevdoradze, who chairs the Georgian parliament Human Rights Committee, announced that that committee will establish a coordinating council on national minorities jointly with the Ministry for Civil Integration.

All these measures are clearly intended to address the perennial problem of perceived and actual discrimination in Georgia against members of other ethnic groups, who according to the findings of the census conducted in 2002 account for 16.5 percent of the country's 4.4 million population. By contrast, in 1989, at the time of the last Soviet census, non-Georgians accounted for almost 30 percent of the population. At that time, the largest minority groups were Armenians (8.1 percent), Russians (6.3 percent), and Azerbaijanis (5.7 percent.) But since the collapse of the USSR, Georgia's Russian minority has dwindled through out-migration to only 1.5 percent of the total, and Azerbaijanis have overtaken Armenians as the second-largest ethnic group (6.5 and 5.7 percent, respectively).

Those shifting proportions can be attributed to the overtly hostile attitude towards non-Georgians, epitomized by the slogan "Georgia for the Georgians!" promulgated by the regime of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia in the late 1980s; to out-migration following the collapse of the USSR; and to the fact that the Azerbaijanis in Georgia have for decades had a far higher rate of natural increase than the Georgians and Armenians. (Then Communist Party of Georgia First Secretary Eduard Shevardnadze proposed in 1980 introducing a differentiated demographic policy, including financial incentives and other privileges aimed at encouraging Georgians to have more children.)

While Gamsakhurdia's short-lived regime signified a nadir in interethnic relations, it was followed by what can be at best described as a policy of benign neglect. Representatives of various ethnic minorities were unanimous in telling RFE/RL's Georgian Service earlier this month that their plight has not improved noticeably in the 14 months since Saakashvili forced Shevardnadze to resign in November 2003. Noyan Tapan on 31 January quoted Georgian analyst Ghia Nodia as saying that discontent among Georgia's national minorities has actually grown since the so-called Rose Revolution, because the incoming leadership promised to improve their plight but then failed to deliver on that promise.

One Armenian woman complained to RFE/RL's Georgian Service that while Georgian politicians pay lip service to the concept of integration of national minorities, it is impossible for non-Georgians to enter government service as applications are "sifted" to exclude them. (That allegation is not, strictly speaking, true: Saakashvili appointed an Ossetian woman last month as his spokesperson.) Mikhail Aidinov, who heads Georgia's Association of Russophone Journalists, pointed out that the Dukhobors -- the Russian sect whose members settled in Georgia in the 18th century -- plan to emigrate en masse within the next few months to Tula Oblast of the Russian Federation. And an Azerbaijani argued that "if we are citizens of this country, then we should be respected" and the government should make an effort to understand and meet their needs and concerns. He said that local and national authorities routinely ignore requests and complaints from members of ethnic minorities, and that politicians only ever focus on them in the run-up to an election.

Those complaints, while valid, do not take into account some very real differences between the situation in Tbilisi, where Armenians, Ossetians, and Kurds are more likely to speak Georgian in addition to their native language, and that in isolated regions of southern and southeastern Georgia where Armenians and Azerbaijanis, respectively, constitute an overwhelming majority. These regions lack Georgian-language schools, the opening of which Saakashvili singled out one year ago as a priority -- but such schools require teaching staff with the relevant linguistic abilities, and it takes time to train them. The OSCE program includes such a program for training language teachers, and also Georgian-language courses for aspiring civil servants.

Nor is education the only sector that requires improvement. RFE/RL's Georgian Service quoted Tevdoradze as enumerating other long-standing areas of neglect, including highways and infrastructure. She also noted the need to inform ethnic minorities more effectively what steps the government is taking to address their grievances. In December 2003 Georgian television launched a 15-minute program in Armenian and Azerbaijani three times a week; presumably this is to be expanded.

The problems the Georgian government faces in winning the hearts and minds of non-Georgians who feel themselves to be second-class citizens are, in short, less cognitive than financial, insofar as all the measures mentioned above will require substantial investment or international development aid. And it is unlikely that European countries will be willing to provide such aid until Georgia ratifies the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. The Georgian authorities are reluctant to do so as they consider the convention grants excessive privileges to minorities, Caucasus Press quoted Tevdoradze as explaining on 15 February.

Source: RFE/RL (Un)Civil Societies Vol. 6, No. 4, 28 February 2005

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