CoE Human Rights Chief Reports on Conflict-Affected Areas

Council of Europe (CoE) Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg said in a report released on September 8 that there was “a humanitarian disaster” in the areas affected by the armed conflict between Russia and Georgia.

The special report on the human rights situation in the conflict-affected areas was compiled based on Hammarberg’s visit to the region on August 22-29. During his visit Hammarberg helped to facilitate an exchange of detainees between the Georgian and South Ossetian sides.

“The conflict has had a devastating effect on the human rights of the population,” he said. “Unfortunately, there is a need to prepare for the grave risk that several thousand, perhaps as many as 30,000, will not be able to return home within the foreseeable future. They must be cared for and assisted to lead a life as normal as possible.”

The report says that although the death toll resulting from the war “was lower than first reported, the Commissioner concluded that a very large number of people had been victimised.” The Russian authorities initially said up to 2,000 South Ossetian civilians were killed in the Georgian assault; later, however, the Russian General Prosecutor’s office said officially there are 133 people registered who have been killed on the South Ossetian side.

“More than half of the population in South Ossetia fled, the overwhelming majority of them after the Georgian artillery and tank attack on Tskhinvali and the assaults on Georgian villages by South Ossetian militia and criminal gangs,” the report reads. “Lawlessness spread in the ‘buffer zone’ controlled by Russia between Tskhinvali and Karaleti and forced many to leave even from there. When several houses and apartment buildings in Gori were hit by Russian rockets, a further wave of displacement took place.”

The report notes that “a policing vacuum” in the Russian-controlled ‘buffer zone’ needs to be “resolved urgently, so that those who reportedly have remained there, are safe and that those who wish to go back can do so without fear for their personal safety and property.”

The report was made before the Russian and French presidents announced on September 8 an agreement, according to which Russian troops in the buffer zone will be replaced by EU monitors within a month.