A much overlooked issue of social, political and humanitarian concern in Georgia has been the
resettlement of so-called ecological migrants, or eco-migrants, i.e., persons who have been displaced
due to natural disasters in their native villages.
Resettlement and internal migration is not a new phenomenon in Georgia. Already in the 19th century,
Georgians were relocated to populate sparsely inhabited border regions. Later with the Soviet
collectivization of the 1930s-1950s, thousands of mountainous people were resettled, forcibly or
voluntarily, to lowland parts of the country. In addition, regions that had been emptied of their
indigenous populations during Stalin’s mass deportations of the 1940s were then repopulated with
Georgians from other regions. In the 1950s and 1960s in particular, much of the population of the
mountain regions of Ajara was resettled into other regions, in order to regulate the demographic
balance and avoid over-population in the mountains. Since the early 1980s, the process of migration
from mountainous regions has been further exacerbated by climate changes, which have had quite a
significant impact on the livelihoods of the mountainous populations. Hence, over the past quarter of a
century, tens of thousands of people have become homeless as a result of flooding, landslides, and/or
avalanches.
Various governments have responded to natural disasters in these mountainous regions of Georgia,
beginning with the Soviet authorities of the 1980s, to the nationalist regime of Gamsakhurdia, over the
leadership of Shevardnadze, and finally to the current Saakashvili government. Each has pursued a
different approach. While in the early and mid 1980s, the process of resettlement was quite wellorganised,
the late 1980s saw a serious increase in the number of natural disasters in Georgia’s
mountain regions, coinciding with the breakdown of Soviet structures and the ensuing corruption. With
the coming to power of a nationalist government under the leadership of Zviad Gamsakhurdia,
resettlement policies were largely guided by a nationalist agenda designed to repopulate the minorityinhabited
and border regions of Georgia with ethnic Georgians. Ecologically displaced persons soon
found themselves as tools to advance such policies. During Shevardnadze however, this issue was
literally ignored. After the “Rose Revolution” in 2003, the Saakashvili government took steps to
address the problems of eco-migrants, although by all appearances a consistent policy for addressing
such issues is still out of sight.
5
From 1981 until the present, an estimated 11,000 families (or around 60,000 persons) from
mountainous regions, largely from Ajara and Svaneti, have been resettled as part of state resettlement
efforts.1
In the same period, an unknown number of migrants, the majority from Ajara, have been
resettled to other parts of Georgia of their own volition, due to overpopulation and a lack of land in
their native regions. The regions that mainly received ecological migrants in the 1980s and early 1990s
were Kakheti, Imereti, Samegrelo (Mingrelia), Shida Kartli, Guria, Samtskhe and Javakheti.2
Later on,
beginning in the second half of the 1990s, Kvemo Kartli has become the main recipient region.
As it is known, Kvemo Kartli and Samtskhe-Javakheti are regions of Georgia which are compactly
populated by ethnic non-Georgian populations. Samtskhe-Javakheti is predominantly Armenian,
especially the Javakheti part (Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda rayons), along with small pockets of
Russian Dukhobors, Greeks and indigenous Georgians. Three of the rayons of Kvemo Kartli (Marneuli,
Dmanisi and Bolnisi) are predominantly inhabited by an ethnic Azeri population, and the fourth, the
Tsalka rayon, is inhabited by Georgians, Armenians and Greeks. The influx of ecological migrants into
regions populated by national minorities has frequently led to tension. Unfamiliar with local social
norms and arriving with a different social and cultural background, eco-migrants have often
experienced severe difficulties in integrating into the local communities. Inadequate preparation of the
recipient communities has often created suspicion and mistrust against the newcomers. Consequently,
poor relations between natives and newcomers have frequently developed as a result of these
settlements.