Abkhazian refugees hold protest in Georgia

In front of the Georgian Ministry for Affairs of Internally Displacement Persons, refugees from Abkhazia held action, demanding to create normal conditions for accommodation and provision of new apartments.

Georgy Lagidze, the leader of the "Future of Georgia" Party, attended the protest action together with the refugees. He demanded that Minister Koba Subeliani should meet the protesters. According to him, if the Minister ignores the demand, the participants of the protest action will come to the building of the Ministry with tents and will not depart until they achieve their goal.

The protest action of refugees was also observed by representatives of the EU monitoring group. Refugees managed to enter the building of the Ministry; however, they did not succeed in meeting the Minister. The Ministry officials proposed the protesters to write a collective statement and thus report on their discontent, the "News.ge" reports.

At the same time, other 150 families of refugees from Abkhazia have granted ownership for apartments in the building No. 3 in Delisi Street, where refugees have been living for 20 years already. Installation of individual indicators and gasification were started at the facility.

Koba Subeliani, Minister for Affairs of Internally Displaced Persons, and Andria Urushadze, Deputy Mayor of Tbilisi, reported on legitimization of the refugees' right for the apartment, the "Our Abkhazia" reports.

Meanwhile, Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, sent for consideration to the UN General Assembly the report on the situation of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees from Abkhazia, Georgia, and South Ossetia.

According to the UN News Centre, the document reports that more than 100,000 persons, who found themselves in the position of IDPs during the conflict in 2008, returned to their houses.

According to the Georgian government, as of late March 2012, there were 295,265 IDPs. At the end of 2010, their number was 256,528 persons.

The increase can be mainly explained by birth of IDPs' children, return of IDPs to Georgia from third countries and late registration, the "GHN" reports.