UNHCR daily Report on Emergency operation in Georgia

UNHCR Report (September 1)

Gori continues to be Georgia’s humanitarian hotspot

Five days after setting up a tented camp in Gori, UNHCR continues to focus on the humanitarian needs in the city. Some 4,200 individuals are currently registered there as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). They all originate from villages in the buffer zone between Gori and the South Ossetian border. Currently, a UNHCR profiling team is assisting the Georgian civil registration authorities to determine the exact numbers, places of origin and the possibilities of return for those IDPs.

The city is filled to capacity: 1,200 people are placed in the tented camp, another 1,000 are staying with host families and some 2,000 in 22 collective centers that include kindergartens and a dairy.

UNHCR’s initial assessment indicates that between 400 and 450 persons have arrived from their villages within the last week due to massive intimidation by armed militias. The other 3,750 to 3,800 are IDPs who were actually on their way back home from Tbilisi and other parts of Georgia but got stuck in Gori as they could not proceed to the buffer zone. The UNHCR team reports from discussions with IDPs that their largest worry is the future of their families. Not knowing if and when it will be safe for them to return to their home villages, they agonize over their houses, their harvest and livestock and how they are going to survive winter.

In Gori, a human chain was formed today by an estimated 20,000 persons, both IDPs and local population. It stretched 4 kilometers from the center of Gori to the Russian check point in Karaleti, where the buffer zone starts. At 6 p.m. local time the peaceful manifestation was slowly winding down.

Reinforced UNHCR team working and living in tented camp

As the distribution of non-food items (blankets, mattresses, kitchen sets and jerry cans) has been finalized in western and eastern Georgia as well as in Tbilisi, UNHCR staff has been re-deployed to Gori to reinforce team there. Currently, there are eight international UNHCR staff members and over a dozen local staff working in Gori and living in the tented camp along with the IDPs.

Also, UNCHR has opened an office in the center of Gori to facilitate work. While still taking care of the immediate needs of the beneficiaries and coordinating all other organizations on the ground, the team is simultaneously putting in place a winterization plan.

UNHCR Representation in Georgia
0160 Tbilisi 2a Kazbegi Ave
tel.: ++995 32 152 054
fax +995 32 385 422
e-mail: geotb@unhcr.org

Media contact:
Melita H. Sunjic, Spokesperson
Tel. +995 95 115460
e-mail:sunjicG@unhcr.org