For many whose parents are from Abkhazia, this territory, experienced only through their parents’ stories, has morphed into a Shangri-La where dreams could come true. “My grandmother took my sister and me to the registration center for IDPs,” recalls the student born in 1992. “It was in Kutaisi. There were so many people I could hardly move. My sister, who’s younger, cried. After roughly five hours of standing in line, we entered the building, and the woman asked me where my Abkhazian hometown was. I said ‘I’m from Gagra.’” Chakvetadze, though, was not born in Abkhazia, the region which broke away from Georgia and went to war against the Georgian government in 1992. She was born in Khoni, in western Georgia, three months after her parents had fled Gagra, a seaside town in northern Abkhazia. According to the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from the Occupied Territories, 98,796 children were born to families displaced from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia’s other breakaway region, between 1994 and 2017. Under Georgian law, they are also IDPs, even though they were neither born in these regions, nor have ever lived there.
authors
Teona Chakvetadze
Teona Chakvetadze is a freelance journalist based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She used to work as a news reporter for online media Tabula. Currently she is an Assistant Producer at Eco Films Chakvetadze graduated from the faculty of American studies at International Black Sea University (2011-2015). Now she is doing her MA in Multimedia Journalism and Media Management at Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA), (2016-2018).
Author's stories
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