Travelling through space and time to meet Georgia's minorities
Piotr Dutkiewicz is a professor of Political Science at Carleton University in Canada and Director of the University's Center for Governance and Public Management. An editor and contributor to 21 books and more than 50 articles in professional journals, his most recent co-edited two-volume book (with Dr. T. Rakowska-Harmstone) entitled "New Europe. The Impact of the First Decade" was published in 2007. He travelled to Kvemo Kartli from 23 to 25 March 2008 to evaluate projects led by the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM).
It is late March 2008 and the first signs of a Georgian spring are already here. I am travelling from Tbilisi with the OSCE's Project Officer Pavlo Byalyk and National Programme Manager Nino Bolkvadze to visit HCNM projects in the Kvemo Kartli region of southern Georgia.
The cities we are going to visit are only 40 kilometres from the capital, but the trip is to a certain extent a journey through time. It almost seems as though we are travelling to a different country, where the majority of the population cannot communicate in the state language, economic development lags behind, and loyalties are still stronger to the extended family than the state.
In Kvemo Kartli, which has a population of about 500,000, there are three main national minorities: Azeris, Armenians and Greeks. Azeris are by far the largest group, making up about 45 per cent.
In most cases, members of these minorities do not speak or even understand Georgian, which limits their ability to participate in the political or cultural life of their country. This in turn contributes to a feeling among them of isolation from society at large and of being unfairly treated by Georgians.
Teaching the state language
Our first stop is a primary school in the area's second-largest town, Marneuli, where 83 per cent of the population are Azeris. The school's premises have recently been renovated thanks to funding by international donors, but there is still no working central heating.
The Azeri children who are just starting their education at the school can barely speak Georgian, and for most of them, Georgia itself is still an alien concept. The HCNM is helping to provide the school's teachers with materials, a methodology and training to teach Georgian as a second language.
The teachers are enthusiastic and explain to us that there is a big difference between teaching Georgian to native and non-native speakers. They needed a new methodology and textbooks, and now, after a year of HCNM involvement, they have both.
We enter a ninth grade classroom equipped with desks from Azerbaijan, and listen to the Azeri children speaking Georgian. Our native Georgian colleagues confirm that they are making just a few mistakes. The teacher, Nona Debadze, tells us that she started implementing new interactive teaching methods based on the new textbook and the training she attended. About 400 teachers like Nona have received training through the HCNM project.
As these training sessions often took place in Tbilisi, the female teachers' husbands were often reluctant to agree with their wives' participation and sometimes travelled with them to the initial sessions. But Nona explains that Azeri parents want their children to learn Georgian and are not afraid that their children will lose their Azeri identity. In fact, many of the youngsters are proud to play the role of cultural translators for their parents.
Integrating into Georgian society
Through a translator, I ask the children how they like their education in Georgian. They say they are happy that they can go with their parents to the market or to offices and explain what their parents need. Some parents ask their children to translate the news or simply to talk to their Georgian neighbours. There is a sense that education in Georgian is the first step to enable children to pursue higher education, become more fully integrated into Georgian society, and thus increase their chances for a better life.
The ten HCNM-led projects in Kvemo Kartli have all addressed the same core issue: integrating national minorities into mainstream Georgian society. They include providing textbooks and teacher assistance; training civil servants, police officers and community leaders; and defending the legal rights of minorities. All the while, the HCNM is careful to help these communities maintain their own identities, for instance by helping to teach Azeri children their mother tongue.
Access to media
Our next stop is the local TV station, Mameuli TV, where the young staff members are clearly captivated by the technology available to them, thanks to the HCNM's support.
The journalists re-transmit Georgian news in the Azeri language and also cover issues from the minority communities on social and health issues, and water and electricity supply - topics that are often overlooked by the mainstream media. In this way, members of ethnic minorities can access news from Georgia rather than tuning in to the stations of neighbouring countries.
Providing legal services
In Marneuli's main street, there is a small office housing the HCNM's legal services team. The centre's services are free to minorities and offered by multilingual lawyers. Without such a service, it would be almost impossible for members of ethnic minorities to read basic documents, let alone deal with local civil servants.
Step by step, the centre has gained enough trust from the local community so that even very conservative Azeris are coming to ask for help with sensitive issues, such as divorce or domestic abuse. The lawyers are now even travelling to remote villages to help minorities in resolving land issues.
All of these projects are helping to build inter-ethnic stability. However, while the projects are very useful, they cannot succeed by themselves. Rather, they must form the building blocks of the state's official policy toward minorities. They must be supported by government funds, as is already the case with some projects. Otherwise, their success might be short-lived, which would be a great loss not only to the minority communities, but to the country as a whole.