Georgia: human rights NGO cannot find conclusions of state commission on damage evaluation in August 2008

In Georgia, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) named "Priority on Human Rights" has addressed local mass media with a request for help to receive information about the results of the work of the state commission, which appraised the damage suffered by Georgia in the course of the warfare in August 2008.

"We sent an official request to the government of Georgia about the damage caused to peaceful population of Georgia. However, the official answer said that the state commission set up to assess the property was stopped and disbanded by the government in April 2010," lawyer Nino Bolkvadze, an employee of the above NGO, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The NGO demands information about the damage in order to strengthen its positions in Georgian courts, which consider the claims of those persons who completely or partially lost their property in the 2008 military campaign. Currently, the lawyers of the organization are running 15 cases on claims of the citizens who lost their property in 2008. On 14 claims the court ruled to reject compensation and the right to lodge appeals or cassation complaints. Only one case is at the moment considered by the cassation court, and the decision is expected within a month.

"The court rejected our clients' right to compensation based on Article 1005 of the Georgian Administrative Code, which runs that the party which has caused an unintentional loss shall not pay compensation. However, we insisted that such cases should be considered based on Article 13 of the Wartime Law," said Nino Bolkvadze.

According to Article 13, the Georgian state shall take responsibility for the property that had belonged to citizens of Georgia but was destroyed during the war. The Law stipulates that Georgia shall take responsibility irrespective of initiator of the warfare, as the lawyer explained.

It should be noted here that in many cases compensations to internally-displaced persons (that is, to refugees from Georgian villages of South Ossetia) and other residents were paid in full or in part by local authorities (gamgeobas). However, as the NGO, notes, the sums varied under some unclear regularity.