Helle Blomquist LLM, MA, Ph.D.

УБЕҖИЩЕ В РОССИИ Refuge in DRC Housing Project in North Ossetia - Alanya Impact of Housing on Social Integration

Ж̣̣. КЦОЕВ: СИМД X. Ktsoev, Tree of Life Exhibited at the Tuganov Museum, October 2005 .

Copenhagen December 2005

1 Acknowledgements

This report is the result of the work and support of many individuals. The idea materialized when Mia Neumann of the DRC Copenhagen commissioned me to investigate the effects of DRC’s housing program on the social integration of refugees in North Ossetia. And Mia backed up my work while later on serving as acting country director in North .

Shelter coordinator of the Vladikavkaz DRC office Oksana Korevina gave most valuable input, attendance and discussions from June through September. The office’s field assistants accompanied me on field trips opening my eyes to some of the practical aspects of the program. SER coordinator Elena Goldin also of the Vladikavkaz office willingly allowed me to pick her brain and thereby helped me address a number of aspects that I would not otherwise have been attentive to. Having my daily working hours at the Vladikavkaz office proved to be an excellent way to learn about the program I was assessing. Participating in office working environment with kind and dedicated colleagues has been a wonderful experience for me.

My assistant Nonna Tsomaeva has been an indispensable help in the whole management of the project, while at the same time enhancing by knowledge of relevant North Ossetian cultural features and daily life conditions.

Moreover, I extend a warm thanks to director Nina T. Gaboeva and deputy director Natalia Chupurnova of New Education who took upon them the tremendous task of engaging their organization in the gathering of the qualitative part of the empirical findings.

Deputy director of the Institute of Humanitarian And Social Studies Dr. Alan Pliev facilitated the collaboration of researcher Igor Dulaev who with a never-ending patience supervised and carried out the quantitative survey.

Upon finalizing my work I had the opportunity to discuss some of the findings with Mia Neumann and policy advisor Peter Klansø of DRC Copenhagen. Their input provided me with inspiration to bring some of the final bits and pieces into place.

It is my hope that the people involved in the housing program and social work in North Caucasus may find the empirical findings and the recommendations helpful in their future work. Likewise I have tried to offer my input to DRC program development.

Needless to say, I take the full responsibility of any inaccuracy or other insufficiencies to surface in this report that can be ascribed to my lack of attention. However, the reader should be aware that the quantitative results have surfaced only after the termination of my task. Hence the reference in the report to these data is somewhat sketchy; and DRC has received a pool of data that has a potential for providing further information.

Helle Blomquist Copenhagen December 12 2005

2 Executive Summary

This report is an assessment of the impact of the DRC housing program in North Ossetia-Alania on social integration of refugees from South Ossetia. It contains: (A) Facts and analysis of empirical findings; (B) Recommendations; (C) Plan for future action.

Keeping in mind the results from the empirical findings we can conclude that the DRC housing program in a number of aspects positively contributes to integration. But it contributes to disintegration as well. The recommendations and action plan address this problem.

A. Facts And Analysis a. Background Facts In 2002 DRC commenced the implementation of a shelter program targeting the refugees opting for integration in North Ossetia-Alania. In summer 2005 direct beneficiaries throughout the period were 265 families (= app. 1,600 individuals). The project title is: Physical and psycho-social rehabilitation in the North Caucasus. Implementing agency is DRC. Donor is Norwegian Refugee Council, NRC. Throughout the period the program has had other donors as well, for instance UNHCR. DRC has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with other local based agencies working with housing of refugees: UNHCR, UNDP and Swiss Development Corporation.

In fall 2005 the program was implemented in 19 different villages in 4 out of North Ossetia’s 9 regions. In 2005 the regions with DRC hosing projects are: Pravoberechny (32 houses), Kirovski (88 houses), Ardonsky (87 houses), and Alaghirsky (37 houses). A minor housing project was established in an apartment building in Vladikavkaz. This building used to be a dormitory for the Vladikavkaz Technical School.

A corollary of the housing of the refugees is their acquiring of a right to obtain public service, such as schools, medical care etc.

The houses are constructed in a building style similar to the North Ossetian one, as opposed to the style in South Ossetia and Georgia. However, contrary to the local brick style they are constructed with building blocks. The programs’ self-construction practice renders the beneficiaries with a construction experience. The land plot can be used for growing vegetables.

In 2002, at the beginning of the program the government of the Republic of North Ossetia indicated the geographical location of the housing projects. Priority was given to the districts and villages having the largest number of refugee families from Georgia (South Ossetia). Vladikavkaz city was not selected as one of the locations for refugee housing. The main reason for this was that the refugees came from rural areas in South Ossetia and Georgia where they had houses of their own. Hence Russian government had reason to believe that they would feel more comfortable in a rural setting and not in an apartment house in the city.1 b. Consultant’s Task The DRC building standards and beneficiary selection criteria were fairly easily available, since they were set by the daily administration of DRC North Caucasus shelter department in Vladikavkaz. The issue of integration of the refugees, however, was quite another matter, since no

1 Information from Vladikavkaz Shelter Department.

3 specific focus had been on this problem before. Within DRC emerged the intention to examine the issue of the impact of the housing program on the wider community. This had close connection to a DRC desire to create durable solutions for the receiving communities and beneficiaries as well as DRC recognition of an area-based approach as a future strategy in North Caucasus. Hence a primary objective of this consultancy task became to examine the impact of the housing program on the social integration of refugees into the host society. The report and its appendices represent the outcome of this collection of data. By normal standards, analysis of stakeholder interests would have been included in a full examination. However, local management did not provide a possibility for this to be carried out.

A secondary aim was to build the capacity of local staff of DRC North Caucasus and local NGOs assisting in the examination of the social integration process. Discussing the design of the consultancy task, North Caucasus coordinator Mia Neumann and consultant Helle Blomquist agreed that qualitative and quantitative methods should be employed in examining the impact of the shelter program on social integration in the wider community. The reasons for this was that the design would provide DRC with the most accurate and valid picture of the condiitons relevant to the program.

On the outset the assumption would be that the social integration of the South Ossetian refugees was fairly unproblematic. Even though North Ossetia is the Russian republic with the largest percentage of refugees, the refugees from South Ossetia belong to the same etnhic group as their North Ossetian cousins.

In her work the consultant managed to involve two local NGOs in the collecting of information, thus including both qualitative inquiries and a quantitative survey. A new template was created for a contract involving this kind of work in North Caucasus. A project assistant was employed and trained in project management, monitoring of information gathering and application of social science methods, in contract negotiation and local NGO work. For the local NGO New Education this was a chance to practice social science qualitative methods and engage in dialogue with government institutions. For the other NGO involved in the project, The Institute of Social And Humanitarian Studies the work provided a possibility of supporting its position in bringing new research results to the table and deepen the acquaintance of the researcher with the statistical program SPSS. Thus the secondary objective of capacity building was obtained. c. Social Integration: Analysis As for the primary objective the work showed that cultural, social and economic differences between the South Ossetes and the North Ossetes were more marked than expected. Tensions were registered and in some cases the refugees were seen to take an isolated position in North Ossetian Society. A number of the features of the housing program contributed to this isolation.

1. The “brick-and-Mortar” Logic Program administration is excellent in bringing out “brick and mortar”. Steps advancing the psycho- social aspects are taken either as a latent function of the direct construction or as a result of an extraordinary, isolated initiatives.

2. Lack of Attendance to Social-psychological Work The description of the program shows that the main and overall priority for the program is to have the program cycle functioning. The cases presented from daily office work show that the social and

4 psychological as well as legal problems of both the refugees and the locals find their way to the office. And clients’ misery places a huge strain on office staff. They are aware of and responsive to social problems and they try to cope. But they lack social-psychological and administrative methods in this direction as well as practice and management awareness and capacity to deal with the day-to- day social problems of clients while swinging around the physical part of the program.

3. No Preparation for Technical Infrastructure The dominating picture was that DRC in fact supports and participates in the construction of large neighborhoods not already having been prepared for construction. Along with the lack of properly dealing with the social and psychological factors, this is the most serious flaw of the present program. Lack of infrastructure is counterproductive to the otherwise legally obtained access to healthinstitutions, to social assistance and to educational institutions.

An attempt during summer 2005 to mend the road situation in Compact refugee settlement Zmeyskaya and the water supply in Mairamadag came to nothing. The failure might have been due to an extraordinary situation (fraud) in the UNDP office. Thus there might be success when applying at a later date. However, three factors should be underlined in this particular context: (1) the writing of proposals drained the resources of the Vladikavkaz office shelter program as well as of the SER program for several weeks while working on the cases; (2) the proposals only touched two out of 16 compact settlements; (3) the Vladikavkaz office very late received information about the failure, and the information came back as frustrated criticism related through another channel. Thus the office was force into a re-active rather than a pro-active pattern.

4. The Compact Settlements A dominant impression from the refugee communities is than 16 out of 22 contain compact settlements patterns to a larger or lesser degree. Moreover, the compact settlements always will be on the outskirts of the village at best, and in some situations even in some distance from village limits. These factors set off refugee settlements from the main village.

If nothing is done and considering the cultural differences between refugees and locals, in the long run this provides the precondition for stigmatizing the refugee communities, opening up to locals talking about “kudarze” telling them on busses to “go home” and talking about the refugee neighbourhoods as “Santa Barbara”.2

5. Building style DRC seeks to respect the local building style. However, in practice the use of building blocks and lack of wall to the street make the refugee houses stand out visibly from the locals, thus adding to the stigma of the refugee neighborhoods.

6. Lack of Feed back and Step –by-Step Accountability Another documented failure of accountability are the cases involving problems with rejected refugee applicants and angry locals. Even though valid reasons for distinction exist, they are not communicated in a comprehensive way. This can be done using open, public meetings in the local communities, where the beneficiary list is being presented, where anybody can advance complaints, and offer additional information, etc.

2 On the concept of stigma, see Erving Goffman, Stigma, New York, 1963

5 Furthermore, only few persons know DRC and can distinguish between DRC and other agencies, such as for instance Children’s Fund and UNHCR. Pros and cons can be cited to support a visible image in the public. But a major advantage at being know and visible is the fact that one only can be blamed for one’s own failures, not for those of others.

7. Collective Centers The focus on the DRC program on preselected areas is a direct support to refugees that already have or a able to obtain a land plot in those districts.

In practice this means that the program is not directly suitable for solving the relocation problem for a large part of the migrant population still being housed in collective centers in Vladikavkaz and Prigorodny.

8. Migration Patterns Together with other housing programs in the four districts, the DRC housing program constibutes to the halt of migraiton away from the districts. However, as business development is not taking place to the same extent, the housing process also causes a rise in unemployment.

C. Recommendations The gist of the subsequent recommendation is that DRC should adopt a more holistic view on the North Ossetian housing program. Thus recommendations are listed in the following 10 points.

1. Stakeholder Analysis And Contact Initially it is strongly recommended to establish a clear picture of local stakeholders relevant to an areabased housing program, in order to ascertain stakeholders’ varied interests and policies on the subject. When approaching local stakeholders DRC should keep in mind that parts of the North Ossetia-Alania elite hold some skepticism as to the intentions and agendas of foreign NGOs. However, one consireation in this respect could be a DRC Vladikavkaz office as an integral part of the international agencies working in Vladikavkaz.3 This will strengthen DRC North Caucasus position since it may advert the alleged accusations that DRC is an agency exclusively advancing Ingush or Chechen interests from the Nazran office.

2.. No bare field; No Compact Settlements; No Small Villages When negotiating for location of new refugee housing, DRC should refuse a location that has not been prepared for construction of houses.

Moreover, in the future DRC should push hard for solutions avoiding the compact settlements. In this connection DRC should oppose large compact settlements. And smaller compact settlements should not be accepted without social measures compensating for the problems they cause.

DRC should also advise government not to include small, rural villages into location of refugee houses, since the social control in these villages, in combination with the resentment of the favourable treatment of refugees will spur hostility towards the refugees.

3 On Thursday the 24 of November 2005 the Russian Duma passed a bill on NGOs. If the bill enters into force as a new law, it will restrict the activities of foreign NGOs. It is beyond the scope of this report to discuss what impact this might have for DRC’s activities.

6 Likewise, DRC can advance the advice to North Ossetian authorities that existing urban structures will be favourably for the location of refugees. If combined with a boost to the economy, provide the area with a willing work force, it will also dampen the isolation of the “datcha” culture and advance integration of the refugees.

2. Respect of Social-psychological Work; Town Plan Issues DRC should supplement the resources and professional competences of the Vladikavkaz office shelter department. A new professional competence should be added to supplement the present construction expertise with knowledge of social-psychological work and town planning.

Also the bringing out of “brick and mortar” should be subordinated to a professional competence of a more holistic view including the complete set of issues involved. Addressing the social and town plan issues is not possible through the mere hiring of an additional local staff member. Hence under the headline of social-psychological work it is advisable to include some additional program units. Collaboration with local NGOs and existing local government institutions is a must; see also 4.

3. Governance Step-by-step accountability should be introduced through open, public meetings/hearing addressing the list of beneficiaries.

For individual cases an explicit complaints mechanism could ease pressure on the shelter coordinator level.

4. Partner Districts; Government Collaboration Since the awareness of an areabased approach depends on a close collaboration of responsible and competent key figures, it could be adventageous to select a pilot district for the implementation of this approach in practice.

Kirovsky district seems to be successful in creating integration. Therefore this district appears to be able to function as a template or test pilot for new program elements. A close collaboraiton with district administraiotn will also fall in line with a large popular desire for the Russian state to engage into refugee assistance. It would be adventageous to include a collaboraiotn with local profesisonals in existing institutions. . 5. Mending Technical Infrastructure It should be considered how to mend the defunct infrastructures of the present compact settlements. It would be preferable to include both local and refugee settlements in new projects in order to avoid tension.

6. Façade Style It should be considered how to advance a façade style more in line with the traditional North Ossetian one, and in this include the present settlements. This is all the more important since refugees do not have economy to improve their own houses.

7. Collective Centers DRC should openly, together with other stakeholders address the problem of the collective centers in Prigorodny and Vladikavkaz, recognizing that a housing in the rural districts might not be feasible for all the inhabitants of these centers. In this connection pressing co-existence issues have

7 to be considered and addressed possibly in the form of social projects embedded in existing institutions (for instance schools). The restoration of apartment buildings could include social and commercial facilities. A close collaboration with UNHCR on the emptying of the collective centers will necessitate DRC to reflect over its beneficiary criteria and produce a new standard.

8. Income generating activities As lack of employment is a major obstacle to integration and the sustainability of the refugee settlements, it is advisable to consider how to add income-generating activities to the shelter program. Income generating activities in refugee settlements should respect environmental standards. If run in a businesslike manner the mere working together in a workplace should not be expected in themselves to contribute in an significant way to peaceful co-existence.

The specific work with the shelter program has enabled the consultant to include some recommendations of a more general nature concerning impact assessment and capacity building:

9. Capacity building and impact assessment It will be a great advantage if capacity building and impact assessment can take place with a clear and explicit social science profile (specialist) according to mainstream methods, including qualitative and/or quantitative methods according to the specific situation and subject. Explicitness should be expressed in contract(s) ruling the activity. This renders the work less vulnarable to accusations of political activities and undue influencing of NGOs.

10. Selection of Local NGOs When selecting local NGOs for collaboration in a specific project such as the present, DRC should consider to advance a more open process to include a greater number available interested parties. This process could draw on the capacity and experience of GRINGO. This would create a better standard of transparancy and possibly a forum of discussion throughout the project.

D. Plan of Action 1. Responsible DRC program units should decide if DRC North Caucasus should procede with one or several of the recommendations above and the sequence and timeframe for this.

2. In this context a first step could be taking up, on a strict, investigational/specialist basis, contact to government and other stakeholders in order to get a full stakeholder analysis.

3. Simultaneously a discussion should be facilitated with the Valdikavkaz shelter department on the development in the recommended direction, involving shelter department as well as SER (livelihood). Within this discussion should be included a sharing of the results of this report with the collaborating partners of the MOU. Missing information should be added. This facilitation should be conducted by a person qualified to set up a more holistic shelter administration. . 4. If the discussions result in a decision to move on, the next step could be a DRC management decision to do a consolidated needs assessment and writing proposal to advance the necessary activities.

5. The last step would be to implement the new activities, subsequently monitoring if they sufficiently address the failures identified.

8 1. Impact Assessment 1.1. Problem In 2002 Danish Refugee Council (DRC) initiated implementation of a housing program in Russian Federation republic of North Ossetia-Alanya. The donor was Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). The program targeted refugees from Georgia, coming in mainly from its Northern province of South Ossetia. They had been forced to migrate as the result of nationalist outbreaks of violence in 1991/92.

In summer 2005 some 260 families had benefited from the program. They had been provided with houses placed in villages and towns in 4 districts. The houses were located in communities of different town patterns, with varieties in institutional patterns and proximity to the main city of Vladikavkaz. The host communities varied in their urban appearance and employment pattern and the town plans took quite different approaches to the location of the refugee houses into the existing town pattern. Very little was known to DRC Copenhagen about the host communities or even about the refugees, except that the program favored the most vulnerable among the eligible refugee families.

A consequence of the program was that DRC alone had provided for approximately 1,600 persons to have permanent residence in North Ossetia. Although the distribution and building of houses were administered according to somewhat equal standards and criteria, there was bound to be a wider variety in the concrete conditions under which the refugees settled. The DRC building standards and beneficiary selection criteria were fairly easily available, since they were set by the daily administration of the office in Vladikavkaz. The issue of integration of the refugees, however, was quite another matter, since no specific focus had been on this problem before. The intention to examine the issue of integration had close connection to a DRC Copenhagen desire to create durable solutions for the receiving communities and beneficiaries as well as the recognition of an area-based approach as a future strategy in North Caucasus.

Hence DRC Copenhagen decided to make an assessment of the impact of the housing program on the integration of the refugees. The task was to find answers to questions such as: To what extent have South Ossetian refugees achieved integration into the towns and villages in which they have settled? Have some refugees been more successful than others in obtaining integration into North Ossetia, getting employment, establishing successful social relations with locals, providing education for their children, etc.? What have been the instruments in a successful integration and what have been the barriers? What role has the housing program played in this process of integration? Do some housing solutions appear to be more successful than others in achieving social integration for the refugees and which are the underlying causes for this correlation? And, if we can point to some types of housing solution being more efficient than others, what can be recommended for a further DRC program development? Can supplementary program elements advance the integration?

This list of questions highlights the necessity to gather information that was not available within the DRC organization already. Moreover, the reliability of the answers would depend on the methods employed. It goes without saying that the ability of DRC to convince donors and other stakeholders of the reliability of the answers would hinge on the methods employed to reach those answers. Hence it was decided that the assessment should seek taking advantage of both qualitative and quantitative methods in examining the wider community. Since this would require intensive

9 collaboration with local social scientists and other assistance in the information gathering process, it was agreed that the impact assessment should also include an element of capacity building of local NGOs or local staff that would be assisting in the collecting of qualitative and quantitative data.

1.2. What is integration? “Social integration” is a vague and ambiguous term, and it has been used to represent a wide variety of concerns. As popularly used, the term carries with it ideas of justice, equality, material well- being and democratic freedom. It also implies harmonious interaction and solidarity at all levels of society.

The opposite of social integration is thus considered to be either the exclusion of certain groups from the mainstream of society, or a generalized state of disorder and conflict conceived of as disintegration. It is useful to have such a shorthand way of encompassing a broad spectrum of normative goals that most people would agree on as a policy for a society.4 The normative goals refer to an objective or factual set of conditions concerning human living; conditions that can be described and analysed with social science methods. While this understanding of the concept is not useful for more in-depth research, it suffices for an empirical study probing into the integration situation of the present day South Ossetian population in North Ossetia. For this study then, this report understands by full social integration of our refugees a situation when the South Ossetian refugees are settled within society on equal terms and with equal opportunities compared to their North Ossetian compatriots enjoying a free, open and confident social, political, economical, and cultural interaction with them. In this sense it is not possible study social integration isolated from the other aspects of the integration of a particular group. When examining the social integration we must analytically separate the particular elements in political, economic, social-psychological, and cultural aspects in order to draw up the complete picture.

We can also use the term integration or social integration to designate the process of reaching the situation of full integration for a group of people. This use of the term highlights the insight of integration not being an automatic or mechanical effect of a specific law or government act emerging refugee status or even as a result of the work of age, understood as a natural organic process resulting from some essential quality of things. Rather social integration is an active and in- determinate process involving several factors and actors. We can talk of the integration being more or less progressed towards full integration, with the expression “no integration” indicating the lowest level of integration and “full integration” the highest level. “High integration” will then be the level immediately preceding “full integration” and “low integration” describing the level when the integration process has started while still being in its initial stages. Disintegration is the antagonistic struggle tearing apart segments of society. Thus :

Disintegration - no integration – low integration – high integration – full integration

Apparently the international community has not produced abundant recent studies in the integration of refugees. One research study has explored means of creating co-existence between different ethnic groups after repatriation of one of the group after ethnic expulsion.5 Such experiences can

4 http://www.unrisd.org/unrisd/website/document.nsf/0/510920DA18B35A6880256B65004C6A7B?OpenDocument, November 14 2005. 5 With the exception of Antonia Chayes and Martha L. Minow (eds), Imagine co-existence: Restoring Humanity afetr Violent Ethnic Conflict, Jossey-Bass, 2003 that was initiated by UNHCR.

10 hardly be compared to the case of South being settled in North Ossetia, since here we are not talking about repatriation. And the two different groups, local host community and refugees belong to the same ethnic group. However, to the extent that cultural differences actually do occur between North Ossetians and South Ossetians, still the mentioned co-existence study might be able to direct us to some “DOs” and “DON’Ts” when wanting to support social interaction between the two groups.

11 2. Impact Assessment 2.1. Objective The impact assessment was motivated by the wish of DRC to evaluate the impact of the shelter programme in North Ossetia in order to draw lessons leaned to be used for future programme design and development. According to the consultant’s Terms of Reference the main objective was to evaluate the impact, positive and negative, on the direct beneficiaries as well as the wider receiving community of DRC’s housing programme in North Ossetia. A secondary objective was to identify and involve local NGOs or institutions in the evaluation, thereby enlarging local capacities of carrying out evaluations involving qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. It was understood that the secondary objective would depend on whether it would be possible to identify a relevant and capable local partner.

If this was not deemed possible, an alternative approach should be developed in dialogue with the Head of Programme, DRC North Caucasus. The output desired was, as far as the main objective goes, a report on the findings of the evaluation, including lessons learned. If unmet needs could be identified through the evaluation, they should be included in the report with recommendations for further action. Concerning the secondary objective, it was desired, if possible, for the consultant to identify local partner(s) and increase their capacity on data collection methodology and analysis. This objective could be met with a memo summarising the main lessons learned in relation to the capacity building of local partners.

2.2. The Elements of the Task The task of the consultant would be to assume responsibility for carrying out the impact assessment as well as identifying, involving and training local counterparts. The tasks of the consultant would include, but not be limited to

(1) Overall responsible for carrying out the evaluation of DRC Shelter programme in North Ossetia, including analysis of results and completion of final report.

(2) Development of methodology incl. questionnaire design, planning and conducting in depth interviews, possibly arranging work shops/focus interviews, procedures for securing anonymity of respondents

(3) Securing involvement of relevant DRC staff in the evaluation (in-put on design/approach and draft report)

(4) Assessment and identification (if possible) of local partners - NGOs and/or University Institutes - with relevant experience or potential capacity to perform the data collection and possibly be involved in other aspects of the evaluation such as qualitative interviews, data analysis, drafting of report. The level of involvement was to be determined by the level of capacity of the identified partner(s).

(5) Training of local partner (or/concurrently/ alternatively local DRC staff) on the aspects of the evaluation in which they will be involved

(6) Supervision of local partner/staff during implementation.

12 (7) Quality control and co-ordination of activities.

(8) Preparation of budget for activity expenses as well as ensuring a proper financial reporting in compliance with DRC procedures. Ensuring proper contracting of local partners.

Simultaneously it was a part of the assessment process for the consultant to function as a consultant to the Head of Programme on survey/assessment related activities in North Ossetia. Also the consultant was to refer to the head of programme.

The assessment project included 3 months of work. However, the consultant advised it be carried out over a period of 6 months due to the fact that the first three months would include the summer vacation period and thus prevent any kind of active data collection. Hence the term included the time from June first to November 30 2005.

An important tool of management for the project was created with the contracting of the local partners, since a list of activities and timetable was made a part of their contracts. The contract needed special consultation with DRC’s Vladikavkaz lawyer, since this was the first time DRC North Caucasus engaged into a contact with local NGOs for rendering the service of a social science project and report. Thus, already here fulfilling one of the tasks of the Terms of Reference, the contract may be a template for similar work. Moreover, Nonna Tsomaeva was engaged as a project assistant.

During the project period the Terms of Reference were amended. In September the Head of Programme finalized her contract with DRC North Caucasus. The consultant hereafter referred to the Country Director. The consultant involved the Copenhagen project coordinator in preliminary discussions of possible future actions. The North Caucasus country director and the Copenhagen project coordinator received a midway progress report. Simultaneously, in view of the number of hours required for project management, DRC Copenhagen decided to omit the secondary objective of capacity building from the reproting. As capacity building was already taking place within the framework of the mentioned contracts and the involvement of the project assistant, the consultant has taken a middle road and included reflections on capacity building where it could conveniently fit into the text of this report.

2.3. Measuring impact: Methodology 2.3.1. Function analysis 2.3.1.1. Fieldtrips and meetings It was included into the terms of reference that the assessment should make evaluations based on qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. Hence from the beginning it was clear that this would require both a qualitative inquiry among refugees, locals and government officials as well as a survey of informaiton based on a random sample of the population in the relevant areas. The qualitative inquiry could identify what facts and opinions were relevant for the process of integration. The quantitative survey could relate to which extent these facts and opinions were prevalent in the population.

However, in order to define indicators for the qualitative survey it was necessary to advance an analysis of the problems involved in the social integration process. The consultant obtained her input for this problem analysis through field trips to villages housing refugees on the DRC program

13 and in meetings and interviews with local administration in the villages of Zmeyskaya and Mairamadag. The field trips provided valuable impressions that contributed to the analysis matrix for the functional analysis. (See below 2.3.1.2.) It was also made clear that, even in the absence of a language barrier, a foreigner could not rely solely on his own conduct of in-depth examination of the refugee communities,6at least not without being able to supplement impressions with information gathered by local experts. Also there turned out to be possible legal obstacles to the gathering of information directly from the population: in September the consultant was informed by an FSB agent that she would be in violation of the law regulating her business visa if she conducted any interview with members of the refugee or local population. Even though this might have been an attempt of intimidation, it did create an uncertain situation for the information gathering. In order to “play it safe” the consultant decided to keep a low profile vis-à-vis refugee individuals and not engage in direct interviewing.

Simultaneously with the contract negotiations in late June, the consultant collected information from other sources on the refugee situation and housing programs. Field trips contributed to this (see above) as well as interviews with representatives from DRC local housing program staff, local NGOs (Memorial and Childs Fund), IGOs (UNHCR and UNDP) and North Ossetian government (Ministry of Nationalities, Federal Migration Service, North Ossetian Ministry of Industry, Small Business Dept. and the prefect of Kirovsky and Alaghirsky regions). This provided background knowledge on the foreign assistance and housing programs, from the perspective of DRC as well as a small group of outsiders having stakes in DRC’s work. It also gave an insight into some authorities’ view on INGOs. The scope was meant to be broadened in order to provide an overview and analysis of the wider community of stakeholders. However, North Caucasus Country Director halted the procedure, citing a lack of DRC accreditation in North Ossetia as the reason. At the end of the project mid November the consultant heard on the grapevine that the accreditation was in place. This was too late for starting a round. Hence an important aspect of the investigation could not be included in the analysis. This issue is addressed in the recommendations, point 1.

A meeting with a high ranking officer of North Ossetian branch of Federal Migration Service (FMS) was facilitated by representatives of Ministry of Nationalities. The consultant had met the representatives at the refugee day meeting (see photo 7 and 2. 4.1.). Th FMS officer expressed his desire to know more about DRC activities in NO-A and a disappointment in DRC showing interest in / only and not in NO-Alania. Moreover, he was dissatisfied with DRC North Caucasus not showing his willingness to take upon them projects in Vladikavkaz city and Prigorodniy district. When the consultant introduced her work he expressed the readiness to open to the relevant authorities. The contact motivated her to retain a letter from DRC North Caucasus management on DRC activities in NO-Alania. The officer found the letter helpful in the accreditation procedure and suggested carry a letter of request for the project to obtain contact to relevant authorities. As indicated above this line of exploration was not followed up. The interview indicated the desire of a high-ranking official to push for a solution for refugees in Vladikavkaz and Prigorodny and with a strong national North Ossetian sentiment.

The dire situation of the families in the collective centres brings another integration problem to the fore: that of the Ingush population in compact centres in Prigorodniy. An initiative to find durable solutions for the South Ossetian refugees will open up for demands to solve the situation of their

6 See Helle Blomquist, Mairamadag Field Trip, Appendice.

14 Ingush neighbors as well. It is likely that North Ossetia authorities will oppose a change in the ethnic composition of Prigorodniy to the disadvantage of the Ossetian element. Opening up to any initiatives will bring the ethnic issue on the agenda in the populations. Some reports declare that the situation especially after is extremely tense. Others, like the FMS officer do not recognize that the serious situation should hamper the possibilities of the Ossetian refugees to receive a durable solution to their housing problems in the district. If the task is undertaken we are definitely looking at a co-existence problem that would require specific measures.

2.3.1.2. The Analysis Matrix Under the Terms of Reference the consultant was obliged to develop her own methododological tools. After preliminary interviews and fieldtrips, she decided that in this case impact assessment should be seen in terms of a functional analysis. Below is presented the schematic approach of this type of analysis with some examples of different indicators relevant to the DRC shelter program in North Ossetia, sorted according to their contribution to the desired program result.

Already on the basis of the first field trips and the ordering of material, this provided some tentative hypotheses on the impact of the housing program on social integration. The field trips went to Mairamadag village in Alaghirsky District and Zmeyskaya village in Kirovsky District. Contact was taken to both village administration and refugees. Both villages had large compact refugee settlements. In Zmeyskaya the trip included a visit to the refugee settlement and houses.

The Functional Analysis. Problems in social integration process Social impact of housing Manifest Latent Function Place to live Good Health / Reproduction Inhabitant of a community Public service Growing crops Improved economy Standards fixed Social interaction Construction experience Literacy enhanced • Learning • Complaints • Rule compliance Tolerance? Richness of folklore? Malfunction Discrimination Families separated/change family style Equalizing Tension Refugee clusters Social exclusion Strain on technical infrastructure Infra structure failure Strain on schools “Barbarazation” Social institutions and welfare Flow to “DRC regions” Rise in unemployment Loophole thinking Rise in crime Fraud Client-ism Refugees pushed out by hostile locals Spending money on construction Migration to DRC district

Building a place for the refugees to live is a manifest function of a housing program. Also a manifest function is that the refugee becomes a member of a geographical, social, administrative, and political unit or community, for instance, Zmeyskaya village, Kirovsky region. He acquires his propiska within this particular administrative unit.

15

There can be latent functions of getting a house: better health, access to social institutions, in real, factual practice, not just as an abstract right. Also the growing crops on the land plot is a latent function, and again another function of the acquiring of a house is an improvement of living standards, ascribed both to the access to home grown crops and to income generating from sale at the market of those crops.

Photo 1. Dzaurikau village, Alaghirsky District. Photo No. 2. Growing vegetables in Zmeyskaya village Two young women, one is pregnant, the other carries June 2005. A baby. Having a place to live facilitates family life.

Another latent function is the ability to create social relations to your neighbors, both locals from the host community and other refugees. A latent function is that especially the families involved in constructing their own house receive an experience in dealing with construction work. But they also learn to deal with agency practice, with monitors’s reports, etc. This will enhance their literacy and their ability to interact with public institutions.

An example of manifest malfunction is the establishment of distinction between refugees and host community. The whole idea of a refugee housing program is to discriminate. The refugees get something that members of the host community do not. This may or may not create tension, and the housing program in itself has no way of dealing with a possible tension.

The limitation of the program to four districts could have as a consequence that some marginal, but very vulnerable groups are left out, since they have not received registration in the administrative community. In this way families may be separated.

Social exclusion is a latent malfunction in the cases where the discrimination causes tension and urges the refugees to stick together and develop their own culture. While this on the one hand can advance the possibilities for mutual support, it also, on the other and as a result of this can deepen disintegration. In the end the discrimination would cause the separation of the two groups. The mere outline of the town plan is a visible testimony of this separation and it makes it more difficult for the refugees and the host community to mix. Another malfunction is failure to establish infrastructure and, in combination with these two elements advancing the process of “barbarization” of the refugee community, where the new neighbourhood is stigmatized. The problem could furthermore be underscored by the lack of technical infrastructure in the new compact refugee settlements.

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Photo No. 3. The compact settlements are located on Photo No. 4. Zmeyskaya refugee settlement starts and the the outskirts of the village. Picture taken standing on . road ends. The outskirt of Mairamadag old village. To the left we can barely sense the refugee settlement.

2.3.1.3. Indicators The focus of the assessment is on the social integration of the DRC beneficiaries into the communities where they settled. This means that we must seek an indication of cause and effect of the various elements of the housing program on integration, we must ask how the housing program, such as: its requirements, procedures, administrative and monitoring practices and its end product, the houses have effected the beneficiaries, as individuals, families or social entities in term of social integration in the community into which they have settled.

In order to establish a correlation between the effects of the housing program on the one hand and social integration on the other in addition we must have indicators for good or not so good social integration (high and low degree of integration, see above 1.2). Only if we can determine the level of social integration of the refugees in the community, we shall be able to discuss to what extent our beneficiaries in the concrete community have achieved this level and to what extent this has been a function of the elements in the housing program. From there we can move to the next step and discuss how the program can be adjusted or supplemented in order to advance integration. A dialogue with the NGO partner New Education ( see below 2.4.1.-2.4.3. and 2.3.2.1.) soon developed the function analysis matrix into a set of indicators: Intermarriage of refugees and members of host community Day-to-day socializing of refugees and host community members Refugees’ ability to communicate in local language Refugees’ participation in celebrations and social events on equal terms with host community Refugee houses located together with host community houses Refugee name style similar to that of host community Refugees being absorbed into local community labor market Refugee children being accepted at local educational and social institutions Refugees being absorbed into vocational training and higher education

In the discussion on how to apply these indicators, it was agreed that they should be incorporated into both the qualitative semi structured interview guide and the structures survey questionnaire for the quantitative survey.

17 2.3.2. Data collection 2.3.2.1. Selection of NGOs To decide the validity of the qualitative conclusions it is necessary to subject the conclusions to a quantitative examination by conducting a survey, including a representative sample of the population we want to be able to make valid statements about. Output from the qualitative interviews, and/or a pilot of the qualitative interviews will become input for the development of the quantitative questionnaire. In other words: A qualitative inquiry can provide in-depth information understanding and interpreting of background, explanations, reasons and motives for individuals, while quantitative surveys can tell us about to what extent certain opinions, habits or characteristics are held by a specific group of people.

Prior to the selection of procedure, choice of partners and systematic information gathering the consultant had a meeting with the country director and the head of programme to set up the standards of the work. The country directed indicated an interest in receiving an audit over the number of houses having been built, the correspondence of this figure to the accounting and a check of constructing material used. The program manager found that this would not cover the terms of reference, indicating the obligation to make an impact assessment. Upon the consultant’s presentation of the analysis matrix and supporting material, the decision was to follow the path that her suggestions pointed to. The potential NGO partners were selected on the basis of a previous screening process conducted by DRC North Caucasus. This screening process had pointed to one partner, The Institute of Humanitarian and Social Studies, eligible of the quantitative survey, and two partners, Caucasian Refugee Council and New Education as possible partners for the qualitative study. The consultant’s meeting on June 15th with CRC revealed that this NGO was not interested in contributing to the work. As both New Education and the Institute were interested, the consultant started collaboration with them.

Moreover, it was agreed with DRC country director and head of program that the collection of data should consist of statements from and observations about the housing projects identified in 2.3.1, and the relevant interactions between locals and the refugees rooting in the host community. This means that data needed to be collected from both the refugee community and the host community. In the samples should also be included respondents that had applied for help from DRC housing program but had not been admitted.

2.3.2.2. Qualitative data The qualitative inquiry should aim at having dialogues with distinctively different groups of people in order to identify stereotypes so that all possible angles were covered and could set the themes for the quantitative survey. A collection of respondents in a pilot for the qualitative inquiry could look as follows: The head of community By referral (snowballing technique): One professional/specialist refugee, well integrated One head of a vulnerable family, for instance one parent family One host community individual, positive to refugees One host community individual, negative to refugees Village nurse (as a professional) Village schoolteacher (as a professional) Village librarian (as a professional)

18 An in-depth impression of different integration measures would be obtained by including the whole family into the interview. This means that the interview should include the family, that is husband and wife and two children, minimum age 10. The family interview setting does of course not apply for the professionals.

The pilot could be enlarged after a visit of a representative from the Russian NGO Memorial, with whom the refugees have had the chance to get legal counsel, interviewing 4-5 of the refugees seeking counsel and interviewing the Memorial representative, separately. In the rush of the inquiry this was not realized.

New Education would prepare successive preliminary reports on interviews carried out in each district plus a pilot report on a village in Alaghirsky District. The reports were to be delivered in Russian, leaving it to DRC to translate them into English. Thus the translation of the individual interviews did not take place. The consultant and her projects assistant supervised the interview procedure through their participation in a number of interviews. The project assistant’s reports are included in the appendices.

2.3.2.3. Quantitative Data The quantitative data likewise were collected from both refugees and host communities. It was decided that they must contain a representative sample. This means that they must include a random sample of respondents from all the relevant communities. With a sample of 1300 respondents the sample will be representative of the selected areas and at the same time have the advantage that relatively small social groups could be isolated and analysed since the groups would still have some size. The sample should be collected in the four districts, where DRC had refugee housing. Results should be coded in English into the SPSS program and delivered to DRC on an electronic file. The institute would write its own report on the findings. They would deliver this to DRC in Russian. Translation would be for the DRC staff to take care of. Thus the Institute’s report would be an important empirical finding in providing precise answers to a few more specific questions. The Institute’s final report and the graphs are included into appendices.

2.4. Assessment Process in Brief 2.4.1. Initial collaboration Collaboration with both partners started in practice already before the contracts with them were signed in the sense that the consultant and the partners became acquainted before the actual collection of data was initiated.

The consultant had her first meeting with New Education on Thursday the 9th of June. The meeting took place at New Education’s office, located in School No. 7, for which its director, Nina T. Gaboeva previously was the principal and deputy director Natalia Chupurnova, present principal of the school. When hearing about the project, New Education immediately indicated an interest, forwarded a CV on a qualified psychologist, Liana Kokayeva, to carry out a qualitative inquiry and invited the consultant to take part in a refugee day round table meeting at the Institute. A subsequent meeting was set up on June 17th, at which meeting, with the participation of SER manager Elena Goldin, a plan of activities was set up on the different elements of a qualitative survey. See picture below.

19

Photo No. 5.In the first project meeting DRC consultant Photo No. 6. A number of meetings took And NE identified the steps and activities place in the district. The Kirovsky prefect supports the information gathering.

After a briefing by the head of programme, the consultant accepted the invitation to participate at the UN Refugee Day round table meeting on June 20th in the assembly hall of the Institute. New Education had arranged the meeting. For the consultant the meeting provided an opportunity to introduce the project to the participants, among them representatives from the Ministry of Nationalities, thus advancing an opportunity to contact NO-A government, using a snowballing technique. It also gave an insight into the research of Igor Dulaev who later became the Institute anchorperson in the assessment project.

Photo No. 7. DRC consultant next to NE and Photo No. 8. Igor Dulaev presents his thoughts on nation representatives from Ministry of Nationalities (top of table) building and refugees. On his right UNDP representative. On his left Deputy director Alan Pliev.

As far as the collaboration with New Education goes the mutual understanding of collaboration between the consultant and NE was established during the following weeks and accepted by DRC management on a meeting on July 8th. The week after the terms of the contract were negotiated between the consultant and New Education. Simultaneously the actual investigation and collecting of data were being discussed. Psychologist Liana Kokayeva designed an interview guide on the

20 basis of indicators apparent according to the functional analysis prepared by the consultant. (See above 2.3.1.2.)

2.4.2. Reporting and Project meetings According to the contract NE finalized the first reporting of a pilot study of the Alaghirsky region, Mairamadag village on August 15. On the basis of this report Igor Dulaev made a first draft of themes that could be relevant for the quantitative questionnaire. Subsequent reports came from New Education, with the latest to arrive on November 21. The first, preliminary report from the Institute came on November 23.

Using the preliminary reports the consultant prepared an analytic matrix that could give some guidance as to the ordering of the answers to the qualitative questions and the phrasing of the survey questionnaire. The matrix also gave advise as how to weigh and analyze the interviews, separate replies expressing fact from those stating an opinion, and distinguishing between information in favour of integration and those that would tend to draw against integration.

Interview Analysis Matrix Facts & actions Values & opinions R: Last week local wedding 7 Refugees work hard, collecting berries R: Local helped build house and mushrooms Pro integration Local administration had meeting We speak same language Relatives invited us to come here We are one nation L: institution dimensions fit now We should help refugees L: three mixed couples here R: Last week I collected berries 3 times I paid x rbl to get my plot Refugees should be sent home Local administ. Denied water Refugees must pay for everything to Contra Integration No water, sewage, roads, gas, infrastructure, get their rights school, kindergarten Refugees cheat and forge papers No money for wedding presents Refugees root of: crime, pollution, No money for TV rising prices No money for transportation to job Refugees have no rights Refugees cheat selling berries Refugees should not have any help

On Friday 23rd of September the consultant had the first planning meeting with the partners setting up the agenda for a reference group meeting. This planning meeting and others took place at the DRC Vladikavkaz office. Instead of the stakeholder meeting originally deemed necessary for a dialogue with a wider community, contact to involved local authorities was to be held on a specialist basis. Both NGOs, the Shelter Department and the consultant contributed to the selection of reference members group members.

The country director regarded the activity as a political and public relations opportunity. Hence he got involved and announced his participation. This strained the timetable. In effect the meeting was held as a strictly professional reference group meeting without participation of DRC management, North Ossetian government specialists, and the DRC consultant. Informing the project coordinator in DRC Copenhagen the consultant omitted any further involvement with authorities from the activity plan in order to reserve time for the information gathering that had already been initiated.

7 R indicates a response from a refugee; L indicates a response from a member of the local host community.

21 The Friday 23rd planning meeting gave feed back from the field interviews. Thus NE reported from their interviews in Michurino village that hostile villages had obstructed the interviewers. A subsequent, scheduled visit to the village was diverted to Kosta village, where similar hostility was traced. The experience resulted in a standard procedure whereby NE informed the Vladikavkaz shelter office before going to a village, after which the office would supply the NE with a list of DRC beneficiaries in the village as well as names and addresses of families being rejected and a few remarks on each family. The Vladikavkaz would also inform of any special problems or issues that NE should be aware of when going. This procedure came into full play with the visit to the last district, Kirovskiy district.

On the second planning meeting the discussion served two purposes: (1) To prepare presentations for the reference group meeting; (2) to discuss the findings, the themes, how to interpret and analyse the data. Subsequent meetings were held with both NGOs or with one of them according to the issues. As is apparent, the project meetings served partly as a tool for project management, for the exchange of information on the substance matter, and for building the capacity of the NGOs to engage in the tasks.

2.4.3. New Education’s Reference Group 2.4.3.1. Capacity Building New Education had its own reference group. Integrated within the work of New Education are young people and teachers being trained to work within the New Education Pedagogical concept. A part of this training was to let the trainees come along on interviews as assistants, watch and participate to the best of their ability under the instruction and supervision of the more experienced teachers. Moreover, the young people also could provide a bridge of rapport to younger people and children among the respondents. Hence the application of the reference group provided a possibility for New Education to build up its own capacity in recruitment of new expertise into the organization.

The use of a wider reference group was applied to some of the visits to Kirovsky district. Also preceding the main interviews in Kirovskiy On November 17th the consultant had a meeting with the leaders of New Education Natalia Chupurnova and Nina Gaboeva together with members of the reference group. This specific project meeting served two purposes: one was to go through the specific situation of DRC shelter program in Kirovskiy, the other was to recapitulate some of the social science methods that New Education had been employing in the project: basic differences between qualitative and quantitative research, the function analysis, differences between information on facts and information on opinions/values, the hermeneutic spiral. While the latter purpose was a part of the capacity building, the first served to prepare the NGO directly to gather information, go through good standards for information gathering and secure that the information gathering did not in an unfavourably way interfere with Shelter Department work.

3.4.3.2. NGOs As Messengers Before going to the meeting with New Education the consultant team received a briefing from shelter coordinator Oksana Korevina of the Vladikavkaz Shelter department. She instructed to keep away from Zmeyskaya village.

She also added information about specific features of the Shelter Deparment activities in Kirovsky District. This would provide New Education respondents with insights that would enable them to interact more smoothly with the repondetns and deal with possible minor conflicts along the way.

22 Hence, near the end of the informaiton gathering New Education achieved an insight into and ability in acting as “messengers for” or “go-betweens” linking DRC with beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries, otherwise out of reach of the Vladikavkaz office. A pracical example is cited in office cases, 3.3.7.

Photo No. 9. The consultant Team with the Photo No. 10. Nathasha Chupurnova with the head NE reference group of El-Khotovo Town

Photo No. 11. Refugees welcome New Education Photo No. 12. New Education Nina T. Gaboeva and gathing information. The “gypsie-telephone” has worked. her assistant having a good time with their respondent.

23 3. DRC Housing Project in North Ossetia8 3.1. Refugee flow 3.1.1. Numbers In budget proposal for 2004 to the Danish Foreign Ministry DRC has made the estimate that after the wars of the early 1990s some 43,000 refugees fled from South Ossetia, Georgia to North Ossetia-Alanya.9 Upon their arrival the refugees have made an initial registration with Federal Migration Service (FMS). In February 2005 FMS in North Ossetia has re-registered 17,980 forced migrants from South Ossetia and 215 refugees,2 see below on citizenship.

For comparison the CIA fact book indicates that in the year 2004 368,000 persons lived in displacement from Chechnya and North Ossetia.10 Even though the total number of refugees to North Ossetia seems low in comparison, still North Ossetia is assumed to be the Russian republic with the highest concentration of refugees.11

In 1991/92 one of the first solutions to the refugee flow was the establishment of the so-called temporary accommodation centres or collective centres, as they are now being referred to. The decision to establish those centres was taken on a federal level, allocating buildings, such as previous recreational centres and factories that had been taken out of use after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A table of October 2005 indicates that UNHCR have registered 50 collective centers in North Ossetia. Out of those 40 are judged to be unsafe and requiring urgent solution.12 The main efforts of UNHCR go in the direction of emptying the unsafe collective centers and creating more durable solutions for the refugees.

A count of individuals presently accommodated in collective centres shows that primarily the district of Prigorodniy and the city of Vladikavkaz carry a heavy burden of refugees in these centres. Table 1. Number of individuals in collective centers

District Number of individuals Prigorodniy 1337 Vladikavkaz 787 Pravoberejniy 203 Alagirskiy 195 Ardonskiy 121 Kirovskiy 85 Digorskiy 27

8 This section of the report is based mainly on the information received from the shelter department. An earlier version has been presented to the shelter department. A discussion of the final report was not possible within the timeframe 9 DRC, Proposal (Re)integration of Refugees and IDPs in the North Caucasus, 2004, p. 3. The proposal does not offer a source for this information. 10 http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html#Issues, last updated August 30 2005. 11 DRC, Proposal (Re)integration of Refugees and IPDs in the North Caucasus, 2004, p. 3. 12 DRC, Strategy for No-A Shelter Project Development 2006, Vladikavkaz August 12 2005, p. 1

24 3.1.2. Events and Causes The surge of refugees was caused by conflicts arising as a result of the nation building processes in Georgia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Following Georgia’s independence in 1991 the Georgian nationalist leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia opposed the attempts of the Ossetian minority in South Ossetia to achieve greater independence from Georgia. His policy spurred anti Ossetian sentiment among the Georgian population and during the end of 1991 many Ossetian villages were attacked and burned down. The same happened to Georgian schools in Tskhinval, the capital of South Ossetia.

In 1992, Georgia accepted a ceasefire to avoid a large-scale confrontation with Russia. The government of Georgia and South Ossetian separatists reached an agreement to avoid the use of force against one another, and Georgia pledged not to impose sanctions against South Ossetia. A peacekeeping force of Ossetians, Russians and Georgians was established. From then, until mid- 2004 South Ossetia was generally peaceful.

The political dispute has, however, yet to be resolved and the South Ossetian authorities still govern the region with effective independence from Tbilisi. Although talks have been held periodically between the two sides, little progress was made under the government of Eduard Shevardnadze (1993-2003). His replacement Mikheil Saakashvili (elected 2004) made the reassertion of Georgian government authority a political priority. Having successfully put an end to the de facto independent government of the South West province of Ajaria in May 2004, he pledged to seek a similar solution in South Ossetia -- a move that led to an upsurge of violence in the region in the summer of 2004.13 Scanty as this political analysis maybe it suffices to address the question of a probable soon repatriation of the South Ossetian. Evidently such repatriation is not in sight.

3.2. Refugees and Forced Migrants 3.2.1. Main Laws Regulating the Status of Refugees and Forced Migrants The laws regulating refugees and forced migrants contain the hooks onto which the housing program is attached.14 There are two main laws. Federal law No. 95-FZ of June 28, 1997 on the introduction of amendments and addenda to the law of the Russian Federation of refugees, adopted by the state Duma on May 23 1997, s1(1) regulates the procedures concerning refugees that do not have Russian citizenship, whereas Federal Law No. 202-FZ of December 20 1995 on Introduction of the Amendments and Addenda to the law of Russian Federation on Forced Migrants refer to persons who have a Russian citizenship. Decrees supplement the laws, providing regulation of the procedures for the housing of the refugees. The federal laws set the terms used to designate the potential beneficiaries of the DRC program. Upon entry into the Russian Federation they will be refugees; when obtaining citizenship they will be forced migrants. In the following both terms are being used indiscriminately, unless the ain is to discuss their specific status as belong to one or the other group.

13 http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?local_caucasus/caucasus_geo_so.html, accessed on June 8, 2005, Georgia-South Ossetia Project by Project coordinator - Margarita Akhvlediani

14 This section, section 4.2. is written on the background of English translations of the Russian laws and comments/ corrections from the shelter department. A final verification was not possible within the time frame.

25 DRC housing program is directed to both refugees (without citizenship) and forced migrants (with citizenship). However, most beneficiaries by far are forced migrants and the number of refugees is decreasing, original refugees often transforming their status into that of forced migrants when obtaining Russian citizenship. It is not unusual to see family members of different status, where most of the members are forced migrants, while one or two members are refugees.

3.2.2. Refugees Under Russian law a refugee is a person who is not a citizen of the Russian Federation and who due to well-founded fear of becoming a victim of prosecution by reason of race, religion, citizenship, national or social identity or political conviction is to be found outside the country of his nationality and is unable or unwilling to avail himself of the protection of his country due to such fear. A refugee is also a person who has lost his or her former place of residence as a result of similar developments, cannot return to it and does not wish to do so because of that fear, cf. Federal law No. 95-FZ of June 28, 1997 on the introduction of amendments and addenda to the law of the Russian Federation of refugees, adopted by the state Duma on May 23 1997, s1(1). A foreign national or a stateless person can be recognized as a refugee if he expresses his or her wish to be recognized as such, cf. law No. 95, s1(2), if his situation qualifies according to the criteria defining refugees under the law; cf. s1(1) refereed above and if his case has been successfully reviewed according to the procedure under the law. A temporary refugee can temporarily stay in the Russian Federation, cf. law No. 95-FZ, s1(3). When he obtains this status he is issued a temporary certificate and unless he forfeits his rights he cannot be returned against his will, cf. No. 95-AZ, s12.

When a person applies for registration as refugee his application will be examined and decided according to its merits, cf. Law No. 95, s3(2)(3). The decision will be taken on the basis of a survey of each person based on a questionnaire and a verification process of the information, cf. s3(3) as well as an identification check. Examples of typical documentation that the Federal Service will acknowledge is proof from local authorities that the person in question was registered in the community at the time of the refugee flow or documentation from his employer at this time. In some cases a person might be denied the recognition as a refugee. Typical examples of rejections of refugee petitions could be if the refugee is a single reported case or if he did not seek proper protection of himself or his rights in his country of origin.

The person that receives the refugee certificate has a number of rights. He has the right to an interpreter in the application procedure; he has the right to receive assistance with his luggage on a journey within the Russian federation; he has the right to receive a lump sum for every family member; he has a right to receive placement within in a center of temporary accommodation (collective centre, see above 2.1.1); he has the right to security, to receive food, medical aid and use public utilities, vocational training and job placement, cf. s6. He also have some obligations, and he can be evicted of his status as a refugee in some cases, for instance if he is convicted of a crime or has given false statement concerning his situation, cf. s 9(2).

The Federal Migration Service is obliged to issue a certificate to the refugee who has had a successful examination of his case, identifying the person who has obtained the status of a refugee, cf. s7(1)(7). On the other hand, if a person is denied the status of refugee, he can take court action against the Federal Migration Service within a fixed period of time from receiving the rejection.

Upon the receipt of the certificate the civil passport identifying the person shall remain in custody of Federal Migration Service, cf. s7 (1)(8). If a person retains his original citizenship, he normally

26 will be recognized as a refugee for a period of up to three years, cf. s7(1)(9). The territorial federal agency responsible for migration is obliged to prolong the recognition of this person as a refugee if he retains his previous usual place of residence and if the stipulated circumstances, cf. s1(1) have not changed.

3.2.3. Forced Migrants The federal law No. 202-FZ of December 20 1995 on Introduction of the Amendments and Addenda to the law of Russian Federation on Forced Migrants regulates the status of the forced migrant, defined as a citizen of the Russian Federation who has left his place of residence as a result of an act of violence or of suppression in other form, committed against him or his family members as a result of a real threat to be subjected to suppression for similar reasons as stated as constituent for refugees.

To be recognized as a forced migrant a person must file a petition to register as such. within 12 months from the time of leaving his residence or in the course of one month from the day that he acquires citizenship of the Russian Federation. Economic migration or migration because of disease, famine of natural disaster is not regarded as grounds for forced migration, cf. s2 and s3(1) on the filing of petition. The migrant must file the petition with the territorial federal agency at the place of his arrival, cf. s3(1). If the agency takes a positive decision on the registration of the person’s recognition as a forced migrant, he receives a certificate, testifying to his status, cf. s3(4). Not subject to registration are persons who are citizens of ex USSR who were subject to the same circumstances described in s1 of the law and who have not filed application or petition for the acquisition of citizenship of the Russian Federation.

The person who has received a certificate of his registration as a forced migrant has a number of rights. He has a right to receive a lump sum of money allowance for each family member according to the law; the right of the migration service to issue an order for accommodation at a centre of temporary stay for forced migrants (that is: collective centres); assistance in transportation of luggage to his temporary stay; accommodation and food at the temporary center as well as the use of public utilities; free medical assistance.

The territorial body of the federal migration service has the competence to grant a person the status of forced migrant, cf. s 5(2). The status is granted for a period of 5 years, cf. s5(4). The validity of his status, however, shall be extended for every subsequent year upon the application of the migrant, cf, s5(4).

The decision of registration as a forced migrant constitutes the person’s rights as a forced migrant under all other laws of the Russian Federation. When a person has been granted the status of a forced migrant, he is issued an identity card, cf. 5(3). Under s5(4) of the law, the Russian authorities have an obligation to launch measures to provide for the settlement of the forced migrants and his family members on the territory of the Russian Federation.

The forced migrant has certain rights, as for instance the right to choose his place of stay within the Russian Federation; to receive an order of stay at a temporary center (collective centre); to receive assistance or in some cases full transportation with luggage to a new place of residence.

Under the law, s7 the Russian authorities have some obligations with respect to the forced migrant. They shall offer a complete list of the centers, recommended for his permanent residence; include

27 him into the list of citizens for receiving public housing; render assistance to the forced migrant in joining a housing cooperative, in the purchase of housing construction, including the allocation of a land plot and the purchase of building materials; granting subsidies for building materials; assisting forced migrants in organizing compact settlements; grant forced migrant the privilege to move to rural communities if they have obtained a job there; provide accommodation for single forced migrants in the house for elderly and invalids; provide for social protection of single force migrant invalid or elderly; rendering assistance for the school education and vocational training of forced migrants in state educational institutions.

It goes without saying that the black letter of the law renders little help if there are no resources to back it up.

Photo No. 13. Mairamadag village is proud of its Photo No. 14. Head of Mairamadag administration Kindergarten. Its size ensures room for the discusses her dreams of establishing a sports facility children from the compact refugee settlement in the worn down building.

Photo No.15. Head of administration in Zmeyskaya Photo No. 16. House of Culture in Zmeyskaya looks unlocks the gate to previous, now deserted Kolhoz magnificent and it has the potential of a community meeting place for integraiton. However, activities are at a minimum.

28 With respect of their jurisdiction the authorities also shall assist the forced migrants to realize his rights of employment, to register as unemployed if it is impossible for him to obtain a job; render assistance to the migrants in obtaining the necessary documents to restore his work record; provide orphaned children places at children’s homes; render assistance to the forced migrant in returning to his former place of residence.

Furthermore, concerning accommodation, the territorial body of Federal Migration Service has the obligation to provide for the forced migrant and his family living premises from the housing fund for a temporary accommodation of the forced migrants and to grant a long-term interest-free demand loan for building the housing for the migrant and his family.

The Migration Service shall also take part in financing the building and the distribution of the housing for a permanent residence of the forced migrants.

3.2.4. Citizenship Under Russian law a Russian citizen is a person who: (1) has been recognized as such before the entry into force of the present citizenship law; (2) persons obtaining citizenship in accordance with federal law, cf. s5, law No. 62-F3 on citizenship of the Russian Federation, adopted by the State Duma on the 19th of April 2002 and by the Federal Assembly on May 15th 2002. The law went into force on July 1st 2002. This law was preceded by the federal law of February 6 1992. The 1992 law distinguished itself from the present law mainly in the procedures regulating the obtaining of citizenship, not the material conditions for doing so.

In section 5 the law stipulates 4 different ground on which a person can obtain Russian citizenship; (1) birth; (2) acceptance as a citizen; (3) restored citizenship; (4) other reasons stipulated in the law or by international agreements.

As far as birth is concerned, under the law s12 a person obtains citizenship: (1) if both parents have Russian Federation citizenship regardless of the place of birth; (2) if one parent is a Russian Federation citizen and the other is stateless or he has disappeared or his location is unknown; (3) if one parent has Russian Federation citizenship and the child is born in the Russian Federation or the child will otherwise be stateless; (4) both parents, being foreign citizens or stateless, live in the Russian Federation, the child is born in the Russian Federation and the parent’s country refuse citizenship; (5) the child is born in the Russian Federation and the parents are unknown.

S13 indicates the conditions for obtaining citizenship, cf. s 5(2). The general condition is that a foreign citizen, not under 18 years of age applies for citizenship. The specific conditions for obtaining citizenship are: (a) he must have lived in the Russian Federation 5 years prior to his application; (b) he must agree to respect the Russian constitution; (c) he must have a legal source of income; (d) he must have applied to the authorized body of the foreign state to relieve him of his citizenship and a possible denial must be beyond his personal control; (e) he must respect the special decree on consideration of problems of citizenship of the Russian Federation. Under s13(2) the 5 year requirement can be reduced when specific circumstances can be documented, such as (a) the person was born on USSR territory and used to have USSR citizenship; (b) if for 3 years he has been married to a Russian Federation citizen; (c) if being disabled he has a son or daughter of 18 years of age who is a Russian citizen; (d) has high internationally acknowledged achievements in science, technology or culture with value for the Russian Federation; (e) if he seeks political shelter; (f) if he is recognized as a refugee as stipulated in federal law. Moreover, under s13(3) persons with

29 special merits for the Russian Federation can become citizens without fulfilling any of the conditions of the first part of this section.

To bridge the gap between the 2002 law and the 1992 law an amendment of 17th October 2003 was enacted. This amendment went into force on December 31 2003. It facilitates the citizenship for all people living permanently in the Russian Federation and already having obtained propiska within the Russian Federation. This exception was made in order for them not to have to follow the more difficult procedure of the 2002 law. In this way it was avoided for the 2002 law to violate the principle that laws should be active for future cases only. The propiska is more easily obtained than the permanent residential permit necessary to have when applying for citizenship under the 2002 law. Under Federal Law a person may obtain propiska by applying to the competent authority at the place of residence. The authority is obliged to grant propiska, if the applicant can fulfil certain requirements.

The permanent residential permit is a document separate from the propiska. Under Federal Law, in order to acquire the permanent permit, a foreign citizen must have lived in the Russian Federation for 5 years. For the stateless person the same period is 1 year. The procedure requires the person to first obtain a temporary registration, then an authority review of the case. If this review is in favour of the applicant, he is allowed a permanent stay of 3 years, after which period he may apply for a permanent permit.

For entering into the DRC shelter program citizenship of the Russian Federation is not required. What is required is a proof that a person possesses the right over a land plot for the DRC house to be built and that he has identity papers proving his identity. These papers can be a Russian Federation civil passport signifying Russian citizenship, a permanent Russian Federation residence permit, a document attesting the propiska or an identity paper issued by the South Ossetian government, attesting the person’s citizenship of South Ossetia. Apart from this the person must obtain the status of either a refugee or a forced migrant.

South Ossetians south of the Russian border are not per se Russian citizens. But under federal regulation they can achieve Russian citizenship under an easier procedure. This regulation has validity until the end of this year.

3.2.5. Specific Problems Concerning Refugee Status The DRC database does not have a function whereby the different groups can be distinguished, since the information has not been strictly necessary to the administration of the program. This means that it is not possible to say how many of the DRC beneficiaries have Russian citizenship and how many do not. An important part of the registration procedure is to document the status of the applicant either as a refugee or forced migrant. In this process DRC has a significant role in assisting the refugees in checking their documentation for their status and providing them with relevant information as how to get this documentation in order. This means that the Vladikavkaz office gets an impression of some of the more pressing problems that refugees face in terms of their legal status of relevance to their eligibility into the program.

It would have been desireable, however, not possible to have the Vladikavkaz office informaiotn on which citizenship or document problems the applicants have.

30 3.3. DRC in North Ossetia 3.3.1. Overview of Program In 2002 DRC implemented a shelter program targeting the refugees opting for integration in NO-A. In summer 2005 direct beneficiaries throughout the period were 265 families (= app. 1,600 individuals). The project title is: Physical and psycho-social rehabilitation in the North Caucasus. Implementing agency is DRC. Donor is Norwegian Refugee Council, NRC.

In fall 2005 the program was implemented in 19 different villages in 4 out of North Ossetia’s 9 regions. In 2005 the regions with DRC housing projects are: Pravoberejniy (32 houses), Kirovski (88 houses), Ardonsky (87 houses), and Alaghirsky (37 houses). A minor housing project was established in an apartment building in Vladikavkaz belong to the Technical School and used for a dormitory of the school.

In 2002, at the beginning of the program the government of the Republic of North Ossetia indicated the geographical location of the housing projects. Priority was given to the districts and villages with major number of refugee/forced migrant families from Georgia (South Ossetia). Vladikavkaz city was not selected as one of the locations for refugee housing. The DRC administration has informed that the main reason for this was that the refugees came from rural areas in South Ossetia and Georgia and they had houses of their own. Hence it was believed that they would feel more comfortable in a more rural setting and not in an apartment house in the city.

As is evident from the description above 2.2 on refugees and forced migrants, the housing program provides the Russian government with resources to fulfill its own obligations under the laws.

The shelter department could not find time to provide information on the number of families, selection criteria, donors and location for the programs in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

In 2004 DRC took over the control the selection process and hence, give appropriate and direct management, the advance of DRC accountability has been advanced with DRC overtaking the direct selection and monitoring of the program in 2003.

A two pages strategy paper of August 2005 for Shelter North Ossetia-Alania has stated the latest position or intentions of the DRC North Caucasus Mission: (1) address a wider range of beneficiaries; (2) provide more assistance options and opportunities; (3) ensure linkages between shelter and livelihood projects.15 A desired closer interagency collaboration will include a clearer definition of beneficiaries, solutions that will serve households accommodated in the collective centers (previously so-called Temporary Accommodation Centers); selection of beneficiaries prior to construction; development of mechanisms of community building, including mobilization of beneficiaries. The selection of sites is still the responsibility of North Ossetian government. However, according to the paper DRC should seek to encourage the appointment of sites that could support social and economic integration into pre-existing communities. DRC should also emphasize that dialogues with both beneficiaries and host communities will be integrated more fully into all programs, just as the selection should ensure reasonable access to services and pre-existing communities.

15 DRC, Strategy for No-A Shelter Project Development 2006, Vladikavkaz August 12 2005, p. 1

31 Furthermore, the August 2005 strategy paper has indicated the intention to explore additional options for shelter provision, and setting up of common standards for the shelter program. The strategy paper moreover signals a wish for pro-active, ongoing consultations with government; for delivery of basic infrastructure to under-serviced IDP/refugee communities in order to enhance their capacity and living conditions thus contributing to achievement of integration and development goals; and for strengthening of ties with other INGOs and International governmental organizations in the area.16

While the strategy paper indicates some goals, it does not – apart from information on number of beneficiaries- include facts on the present state of DRC activities in the field or of progress of DRC in the desired direction. It also does not offer an analysis of DRC’s present situation and likeliness in obtaining the goals, an analysis of relevant donors for the implementation of the new activities under the strategy, the instruments for obtaining the goals or the resources allocated to this. It also does not indicate how this integration approach can be supported by the organizational structure of DRC North Caucasus.

Table 2 Overview over house grants 2002- 2005 This table indicates the number of individuals being assisted under DRC North Ossetia program in the period 2002- 2005 and in which villages the refugee has settled. The table shows that in Kirovsky Region DRC has assisted 88, in Ardonsky 87, in Pravoberizhniy 52 and in Alaghirsky 37.

Ardonsky 87 Alaghirsky 37 Kirovsky 88 Pravoberezhniy 52 Ardon 69 Alaghir 3 Darg-Koh 3 Beslan 26 Kirovo 1 Dzuarikau 8 El’khotovo 10 Brout 8 Kosta 7 Khataldon 2 Kardzhin 17 Khoumalag 10 Krasnogor 6 Mayramadag 23 Zmayskaya 58 Razdzog 7 Michourino 2 Nogkau 1 Tsalik 1 Nart 2

3.3.2. Program Target Groups In the present administration of the program the selection of beneficiaries targets the most vulnerable families who are not in a position to construct/complete their houses. Typically the selection includes those families that are accommodated in community shelters, with host families, as squatters in public buildings, or in temporary shelter and collective centers. The criteria for choosing beneficiaries can de divided into the following groups: (1) Vulnerability; (2) Capacity to conduct rehabilitation; (3) House size/ number of family members; (4) Costs.

Vulnerability The following criteria are relevant in the assessment of vulnerability: (1) No access to adequate income either through a steady job or through income-producing land or other assets; (2) families with over 3 children under the age of 18 years; (3) female headed families without able bodied members; (4) families with elderly persons over 65 years old; (5) families with physically disabled and/or mentally sick members; (6) if the family is facing homelessness; (7) if the family is at risk (safety or health) as a result of their current living conditions; (8) if the family is unable to fund housing construction/completion.

16 DRC, Strategy for No-A Shelter Project Development 2006, Vladikavkaz August 12 2005, p. 1-2.

32 Capacity to conduct rehabilitation The household must be able to conduct the works themselves and/or with the help of relatives or neighbours.

Size of house versus number of inhabitants When choosing between several houses, the houses with the most cost benefit effect when measuring the size of house versus the number of inhabitants is taken into consideration. To assist the maximum number of families, large houses are excluded and small houses given priority.

Scope of works needed (costs) Costs are also part of the picture, when choosing beneficiaries. This is partly a question, whether an appropriate number of beneficiaries (family members) will benefit from the construction versus the costs, partly a matter of the size of budget. The administration seeks to set transparent standard, as for instance securing that the amount of construction/completion assistance provided is equal and fair, taking the specific situation of each family into consideration.

Table 3. Overview of house grants 2002-2005, different categories 1st category* 2nd category** 3rd category*** 4th category**** House constructed Walls erected Walls partially erected Only foundation minus interior provided 2002-2003 49 7 9 30 2003-2004 24 15 18 48 2004-2005 14 6 7 37 TOTAL: 87 28 34 115

* - house was constructed by beneficiaries at their own cost and lacks only interior works; ** - walls of the house are finalized. Assistance requested includes roofing materials and interior works; *** -walls of the house are partially erected. Assistance requested includes materials for completion of walls, roofing and interior works; **** - only foundation exists.

In 2005 a new category was introduced in a UNHCR project located in Krasnagor Village, a number of most vulnerable families are being helped with the foundation as well as a working brigade is being formed to assist the families with the foundation. This has made it possible to include families with no or little ability to apply their own labor on the house.

The 2005 criteria for selection of beneficiaries have been slightly adjusted, compared to previous years. However, the main tenant of the selection has been upheld, which is support to the most vulnerable families.

3.3.3. Selection of Beneficiaries In the selection procedure the administration strives to secure the maximum impact of the criteria in each case. Colleagues from the Vladikavkaz shelter department review the applicants being registered for the season. The DRC shelter staff made a pre-selection of beneficiaries. A scoring system is used in order to select the most vulnerable. Before them the DRC pre-selection committee members have the same standardized material and documentation on each family, a copy of their passports, testifying to their citizenship, their propiska and their status as forced migrants, their family situation, their income and their possession of a land plot. The documentation has been

33 copied from original documents, and each year some of the applicants having lost their original papers, are necessitated to have the authorities issue papers for them, in order to proceed with the registration procedure. The shortlist is brought to a joint selection committee consisting of members from UNHCR staff and DRC shelter. The joint committee has all files and material available, so there is full disclosure of all relevant information to all joint committee members.

Thus apart from the vulnerability criteria there is a number of formal conditions that a beneficiary must meet in order to be admitted: He must have moved to North Ossetia during the years of 1990/91 as a forced migrant, cf. law on forced migrants; see above 1.2.3.3; he must possess a land plot in one of the DRC districts; he must possess the relevant papers under the law to document his status as either a refugee or a forced migrant.

The Vladikavkaz shelter department checks the identity of each person with the DRC register to ensure that no member of the family has been registered as a beneficiary at a previous round of house grants. Each season the administration finds such attempts at being allocated double help, even though all applicants must testify that they have not previously received assistance under the DRC program. (see below 3.3.7 typical cases and administrative standards). After this first selection the pre-selected families are run against the Federal Migration register on persons having received assistance from Federal Migration Service, since this will exclude this person from also receiving a DRC housing grant. Each year some of the otherwise selected families will be taken off the DRC list for this reason, while others will be added in their place.

The 2005 UNHCR project in Krasnogor village has challenged DRC’s criteria since the beneficiaries of this project were inhabitants of a collective centre for whom UNHCR wanted relocation. Therefore only few fulfilled DRC criteria of individual family vulnerability and moreover they had to be allocated land in a new village, since they came directly from a collective center. This attests the need to give attention to the DRC beneficiary criteria if moving into closer collaboration with UNHCR.

3.3.4. Construction And Completion Standards The common standards for construction and completion and are based on the following principles or assumptions: The construction/completion of the housing stabilizes the living conditions of refugee/IDP families and provide durable protection for the households and their personal belongings; The construction/completion works in terms of quality of materials and way of implementation are accomplished in compliance with current laws and regulations; The materials and methods applied must be culturally acceptable to the beneficiary community.

There are some common standards applied to the whole program. Selected beneficiary houses, regardless of the category are constructed/completed up to a common standard including:

1. The average size of houses when DRC helps with the completion is estimated to be 90 to 110 m2 (external dimensions), and new housing constructions on existing (in some cases new) foundations shall be up to maximum of 90 m2 (external dimensions).17

17 Information is provided by shelter department. The shelter manager indicated a desire to modify this information. However, the department has failed to do so within the time frame.

34 2. Wall surfaces are of durable permanent construction materials (in accordance with the traditional methods of building either bricks or cement building blocks, depending on the household’s abilities and request) to ensure the long-term well-being of the beneficiaries. By far the largest number of beneficiaries chooses building blocks over bricks. Building blocks are much cheaper which means that the families will have more money or opportunities at their disposal.

3. Reinforced concrete ring beam is installed to provide sufficient stability and load bearing capacity for the roof, within the required tolerances of local static and anti-seismic building codes.

4. The house is covered completely with a permanent roof construction frame and galvanized corrugated iron sheets. (Usage of new roofing materials instead of asbestos is a little bit expensive, but more durable, qualitative and health-save.)

5. All under-roof space is closed in order to prevent the ingress of wind, rain and snow, including the installation of roof gables as required using either bricks or building blocks (basing on the choice made by beneficiary).

6. Windows and doors of adequate market standard enclose the external openings to the extent possible (within the proposed budget). Window frames should have double-glazing. Number of internal doors depends on the funding available.

7. Internal wall plaster is applied to rough-finished standard.

8. Floor and ceiling surfacing is achieved with full coverage of permanent construction material (at the household request it is either wood or ply-wood ceiling, and hard wood or chipboard flooring).

The possibility and amount of the assistance provided for interior works (p. 7, 8) is considered by cost and feasibility in the process of project implementation.

Photo No. 17. Average style house in good construction Photo No.18. Ardon Town. Local brick houses to the standard. App. 50 m². Iron sheet roof, market right and refugee houses to the left. DRC seeks to find standard windows. Buildings blocks. a building style acceptable to the local building style. Address: Revolutsi No. 13 in Ardon town. The refugee houses have not yet established their wall. Compare to Photo No. 19 and No. 20 and 21 below.

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Photo No. 19. Refugee house in Mairamadag Photo No. 20. Refugee houses showing compact settlement. Not a DRC house. traditional North Ossetian style however with building This shows a Georgian building style. blocks instead of bricks. The wall to the street has been constructed. Mairamadag compact settlement. See also photo No 18

Photo No. 21. Mairamadag old village. Photo No. 22. In between refugee houses in Mairamadag Houses close off to the street. compact settlement. The donkey grazing the harvested cornfield.

3.3.5. Location of Refugee Houses When establishing housing solutions for refugees, the nature of the solution reflects different implementation methods as well as various location patterns in specific villages. In the grouping together of refugee settlements according to town plan, different housing patters emerge. In the following are listed some of the solutions chosen in North Ossetia, some of which are employed in the DRC program, some of which have been employed in other agency programs, and yet others to have been applied to a temporary housing of refugees in collective centres.

36 1. The twin village approach The families are being relocated in special refugee settlements close to existing village structures but not directly connected to this. DRC has not engaged in this style of outline of houses. An example could be the Tsalik settlement, see photo No. 27. This refugee settlement is built by UNHCR.

2. Empty- lot approach In some cases houses have been built directly in the existing village structures on empty lots. The consequence of this is that the refugee houses achieve direct access to existing town/village technical infrastructure. DRC projects employing this style are seen in: El-Khotovo and Kardzin in the Kirovsky district, in Krasnogor in Ardonsky district, in Beslan in Pravoberejniy district and Tsalik in Pravoberishny district.

Some towns and villages have scattered houses while at the same time having compact refugee settlements, typically on the outskirts of the town or village. This is true for Alaghir town in Alaghirsky district, Ardon town in Ardonskiy district and the village Darg-Koh in Kirovsky district as well as Khumalag and Radzdog in Pravoberishny district.

3. Compact settlements In the compact settlements houses are being built as a natural enlargement on the outskirts of the village as a new street added to the original city grid. Here the houses are part of the town or village. However, as opposed to the empty lot approach they are compact settlements with refugee houses only. And since the town plan includes rather large plots for each house, a compact settlement can easily appear as a new subdivision in itself. The subdivision will be on the outskirts of the town or village, far from public centers and services. In spite of this it is not automatically provided with the normal public functions that would be established when a new neighbourhood is established.

An example is Zmeyskaya village, where a settlement of app. 40 houses has been built with UNHCR funding and Migration Services as responsible for the contracting. Also Mayramadag belongs to this group of settlements. The compact settlements are found in a large majority of DRC projects, in 16 out of 22 towns and villages. While some of the villages also have a fair share of scattered refugee houses, as well in a large part of them the dominant impression is the compact settlement, although perhaps not of the same dimensions as Zmeyskaya or Mairamadag. This mixture is the case for: Kosta, Michurino, Fiagdon, Kadgaron in Ardonsky district. Some towns and villages have compact settlements only. This is true for Zmeyskaya, for Nart in Ardonsky district, Brout in Pravoberishny district and Khataldon, Dzaurikau, Mairamadag and Noggau in Alaghirsky district.

4. Collective centers: The Sanatorium/ Factory Many collective centers have used existing buildings located in isolated positions (see about collective centres 2.1.1. above). The buildings may be situated in recreational areas in the country or recreational areas, but also in factories, plants and warehouses.

The factory/warehouse solutions often involve health hazards to the refugees, tuberculosis, cancer, early child death. Often local municipalities have offered those solutions to refugees.

37 It goes without saying that this type of shelter is not included in the DRC activities. Rather the effort of DRC will go in the direction of offering others and more durable solutions to the families living here. An example of this is the refugee community in Krasnagor village chemical warehouse, in 2005 being relocated in a UNHCR funded project, implemented by DRC.

5. Collective centers: The Hostel/ Farmer Brigade/ previous institutions Other collective centers are located in the town or near urban areas. Again the families are being relocated in institutions integrated in the existing town structure at dormitories or village hostels or farmer brigade houses having been established for temporary labor force. An example is the Vladikavkaz Technical School that has welcomed refugee families from Georgia and disabled students from Chechnya. Although untypical of its practices in North Ossetia, DRC has been actively involved in creating this solution. The school has also allowed for some reconstruction and repair of rooms, pipe system and kitchens for the benefit of the entire student hostel. Apart from this example this solution has not been a part of DRC activities.

The goal of UNHCR is to find durable alternatives to the collective centers. In some cases the collective center can be the foundation of a durable settlement. For some time Swiss Development Organization has been working with the transformation of one collective center.

6. The Apartment Building A specific housing alternative is the one offered by Federal Migration. The families are provided with federal grant to pay rent for an apartment in an established residential area.

While providing a direct physical onto the existing town structure, this method of re-housing may cause certain difficulties for the beneficiaries. They get a reimbursement for their expenses. But in contexts of the loan program this does not give them full compensation. And if grants do not cover the need they will still have forfeited their right to apply for other subsidies.

Table 4. Overview over DRC housing and their appearance in the town plan

Compact patterns Scattered Hostel in town El-Khotovo X Darg-Koh X X Kardjin Zmeyskaya X Ardon X X Nart X Kosta X Michurino X Krasnogor X Fiagdon X Kadgaron X Beslan X Khumalag X X Brout X Razdog X X Tsalik X X X Khataldon X Dzuarikau X Mairamadag X Nogkau X Vladikavkaz x

38 Different location patterns

Photo No. 23. Zmeyskaya compact settlement is a new Photo No. 24. Assistance to a refugee house in Alaghir Town Neighborhood. Center. North Ossetian building style: brick façade, street wall.

Photo No. 25 Nearst access to Ardon compact Photo No. 26. In Ardon the refugee settlement reduced settlement for the feral road is a grass field the village commons, used for grazing of cattle

Photo No. 27. Tsalik. The twin village, implemented by Photo No. 28. Collective center in Vladikavkaz. Some Children’s Fund. The settlement is app. 2 km from the village. centers can be reverted into durable solutions. For others in Good technical infrastructure and brick walls habitants risk eviction or the buildings are in a sore state.

39 3.3.6. Organization and Administrative Functions In daily practice the administrative functions of the DRC program is carried out from the office in Vladikavkaz. The program coordinator is Oksana Korevina who has at her assistance one senior field assistant, 4 field assistants/monitors.

The coordinator has the daily supervision of the monitors. She instructs them in the planning of their work and in any issues raised in their dealings with the beneficiaries. She refers to the ex- patriate shelter and reconstruction manager who is responsible for the shelter programs in all three republics, North Ossetia, Ingushetia and Chechnya. At the time of the finalizing of this assessment the shelter and reconstruction manager was electrical engineer and certified mechanic Jens Pake with many years of experience in shelter programs and logistics. In the main office in Nazran another coordinator is responsible for the programs in Ingushetia and Chechnya, likewise with a reference to the shelter and reconstruction manager.

The shelter coordinator has a professional training as a business college graduate. The monitors/field assistants have different professional backgrounds. The senior monitor is an engineer, one is a 3-year student of construction school, one is a lawyer, and the remaining two have an on-the-job training in construction and logistics.

The coordinator follows all operations within the program from the allocation of lots, selection of beneficiaries, calculation of expenses, buying and storage of material, building construction etc. She oversees the each specific case and the filing documentation for each building and beneficiary. She receives beneficiaries at the office during office hours (limited to mornings), and she oversees construction work in the field, meeting beneficiaries and receiving complaints, questions etc. In this function she reviews earlier decisions or she might assist beneficiaries or non-beneficiaries in getting into contact with the competent authority if the person is not eligible under DRC program. The coordinator is involved in preparing new proposals, thus following a full circle of program development and implementation. She also calculates the expenses of construction for the houses of the season.

At the time of the assessment, the monitors were allocated to the different programs, one to UNHCR programs, the other to NRC programs. They oversee the direct work with the house construction, they take the first registration of beneficiaries in the field at the beginning of each program cycle (in July/ August). They also pass out advice on DRC criteria and procedure. Hence they function as a sieve through which the beneficiaries are being sorted. If applying their knowledge correctly, the monitors very quickly can focus on the beneficiaries and their needs, emsuring the best support available.

Previously the monitors used to attend their own district. For the new season of 2005, the coordinator made a change of practice, so that the monitors supplement each other on the districts. Also potential beneficiaries not found in the villages at the first and second approach are told to come to Vladikavkaz so that they get into direct contact with the office. This has a number of advantages: Beneficiaries learn that they are being helped by an organization and not a person (the monitor), the secretary can take on some of the monitors’ administrative functions, thus giving them time for more advisory functions and the coordinator gets a better chance to screen some of the beneficiaries not easily available at their recorded place of residence, thus limiting the risk of beneficiaries faking their place of residence. Also the applicants cannot lobby their own case vis-à- vis one specific monitor. Also and a potential risk of corruption is prevented.

40

Office procedures are being supported by an extensive filing system. Each beneficiary has his own paper and electronic file. People being rejected from the selection procedure are kept on file as well.

The task of enforcing administrative standards is not always an easy one in the face of the human despair, grief on the one hand or plain deception or fraud on the part of the applicants that the office must deal with on the other. Especially during the registration season there is a huge pressure to get admitted into the program. In order to meet the challenge the coordinator has posted information on the walls of the office: (1) a list of all families having applied to the program and a few lines of the conclusion of their case; (2) a list of all the families being admitted into the program for the current year and some picture examples of their housing circumstances at the time of the application. Any complainant will have the possibility of comparing his or her own situation against the situation of those being admitted.

Even so, emotional clashes occur. (See office cases 3.3.7.) Impressions from the shelter coordinator’s office indicate that often this is where “the buck stops”, hence applying a lot of pressure on the office staff there. Visits to the villages also abundantly demonstrated that there is a craving for direct contact with the DRC officers. Even though information posters are put up, they get no attention. Refugees are alerted by word of mouth ( “the gypsie telephone”) that the Vladikavkaz coordinator is in the area. And it is around her that they gather to discuss they cases with her directly.

41 Vladikavkaz office in pictures. Illustrations of administrative practice.

Photo No. 29. Consultation in Vladikavkaz Office. Waving her hand, the woman indicates that she understands the coordinators explanation

Photo No. 30. Going into the field to monitor the construction of a house, monitor Aleksandr (left) is contacted by a potential applicant who wants information on selection criteria .

Photo No. 31. Monitor Valeri on his way to register Photo No. 32.Valeri starts registration with an applicant. applicants in Razdzog. With him he has the However, applicant had lost his civilian passport. His portable Xerox/scanner, allowing him to take sister had gone to Beslan to get the copy necessary for all the documentation directly from the applicant the registration. In the end they became DRC beneficiaries in 2005.

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Photo No. 33. The list of this year’s beneficiaries posted in the office with pictures showing their present living quarters. Photo No. 34. Project assistant Nonna Tsomaeva (right) points to an applicant on the list posted in the office. Oksana Korevina to the left.

3.3.7. Beneficiaries and good governance From the very beginning of the project and until October 2005 the close contact between the consultant and the Vladikavkaz office has allowed the consultant to capture some examples of practices, relating to the daily confrontation with beneficiaries. The administrative standards applied to beneficiary cases play a major role in the formation of the confidence that the actors invest in DRC. Hence, although indirectly, this affects the possibility to improve the integration of refugees into society, since good standards ensure that the most vulnarable receive help. In turn this advances the acceptance that the program enjoy..Without having direct guidelines the administration seeks to follow “good governance” or “good administrative standards”, and while by no means exhaustive, the following few cases, can illustrate administrative practice of the Vladikavkaz Office:

OFFICE CASES 1. Host Community Vulnerable Person a. Kadgaron grandmother In the morning of August 2 a woman from Kadgaron came to the office and told her story: She was a grandmother, single, since her husband had died. She had two grandchildren of which she was the sole provider. She lived with her son, but he was of no help, since he was an alcoholic. Her grandson of 14 was very talented and helped her whatever he could. She added the information of her husband to have served in the Great Patriotic War

She lived with the children in a house that had been destroyed in two separate storms. Under the last storm one wall had fallen down and her daughter, the mother of the children had been electrocuted, due to the rain and the disruption of electric installations. The roof had come down and in reality she was living under open air. She brought with her pictures to show this. She had contacted local authorities and they had denied any help.

Oksana Korevina informed the woman that she was not admissible under the DRC program, since this covered only refugees and IDPs. The following possibilities were discussed: 1. A reply that she was not admissible into the DRC program, referring her to the competent authority. 2. Another answer would be that be that she was not admissible into the DRC program, referring her to the competent North Ossetian authority. This could be preceded by a DRC telephone call to the authority, presenting the case, checking that this reference would be the correct procedure and then agreeing that DRC send the woman’s letter and photographs to the authority and advising the woman to address this authority.

43 3. If a good contact were established to the authority on an expert level then DRC could suggest that this person be appointed to the impact monitoring reference group to discuss the best interface of DRC programs with North Ossetian programs.

Since the DRC office at the time was working hard on the registration procedure, Oksana wrote her a letter telling that DRC could not help families that were not refugees but that DRC would assist her in finding out which North Ossetian authority would be the correct one for her to approach with her problem. At the beginning of September Oksana returned and informed the woman that she should take her case to the next authority level, the district level. b. The angry local. On the morning of September 23rd a woman comes to the office and asks to be admitted into the program. As she explains her situation, it is obvious that she is not within the group of potential beneficiates. She is a local Ossete. When Oksana explains this to her she gets angry and frustrated and will not accept this fact. Her reaction is simply to disregard it and insist that she should be helped. Why should refugees be helped and not her? She cannot deny that she is not a refugee, however, and Oksana’s argument in the end becomes the loud spelling out of DRC’s name in an attempt to have her understand that our agency is limited to deal with refugees.

2. Uncertain Ownership On September 20th a younger woman comes to the office to be registered, complaining about the rejection that she got from DRC. Her living conditions are thoroughly documented, a large house, constructed out of building blocks. No additional work needed to be done. Oksana shows her the DRC file with the photos of the house and points to the bulletin board, where pictures of the living conditions of this year’s beneficiaries are on display. The woman gets angry and explains that the house belongs to her relatives and she only lives there. They can throw her out any day they like.

Oksana argues that the ownership of the house has not been registered at the Land Register Office. This means that anybody may register ownership and there is no preventing the relatives to register the house to her if they so desire. As long as her present, de facto living conditions are considerable better than any of the beneficiaries being registered and as long as she has the ownership of her present quarters are unclear (she being a potential owner) DRC cannot admit her into the program.

Apparently this is the last straw for her, and she starts to go into hysterics. It turns out that she lost two children in the Beslan hostage tragedy and all her pain just gushes out of her. She feels that nobody understands or listens to her. Now everybody in the shelter department and the SER program is involved. The commotion is getting worse and people come from adjacent offices. Nonna and I have to stop talking and working altogether. After a while she calms down and leaves the office.

3. The constructed family On Monday the 26th of September an elderly woman complains about not being admitted into the program. She is being seated in the chair by the door. Oksana and the secretary check her file and find out that the family registered is not in fact a real family. She has constructed a household of members from the wider family, members rightly belonging to other households, as for instance a 3- year old boy, living with his parents in another house. The parents were not included in the household that she had wanted to register. Some of the family members have already received help under DRC housing program. This means that accepting them into a new registration would imply double help.

At the beginning the conversation is running smoothly. The woman says “ok” and thereby indicates that she understands. Later, however, when she realizes that her constructed family is not being accepted as one that can benefit in this round as well, she starts yelling and roaring. Her last resort is that she will write Putin.

After she had left, Oksana comes to my desk and explains the situation. My reaction is: It is very easy to reply to her threat of writing Putting, simply by saying to her: Yes, please do, and do not forget to tell him that you have provided us with false information.

4. The Double Beneficiary In 2002, from the village of Nogkau, Alaghir region, DRC admitted a family of 6 into the shelter program. Members of the family were the grandfather, the grandmother, one unmarried son and another son with a wife and son. Originally the family had admitted two applications, one admitted by the grandfather including himself, his wife and their

44 unmarried son and the other admitted by the other son on behalf of his wife and their son. At this time the grandfather did not have a land plot, and it was uncertain if and in that case when he would be able to obtain this.

At that time DRC was a new organization in North Ossetia and criteria for selection of beneficiaries had not yet been developed. Therefore DRC collaborated with UNHCR and selected beneficiaries from a list provided by Children’s Fund. This family was on the list. Apart from a land plot the married son also had a foundation for a 120 m2 house. Since the other conditions were fulfilled, the family was admitted into the program for a category 4 brick house.

In July 2005 the grandfather approached the DRC and applied for a house for himself, his wife and their unmarried son. On the DRC application there is a question asking the applicant whether he or his relatives previously received assistance under a DRC program. Contrary to the truth of the matter, he answered this question in the negative.

When working with the registration the monitor/ secretary as a matter of routine procedure checked the family names up against the DRC database of beneficiaries and preciously rejected applicants. The procedure is first to check the family name, and in case of identity check the patronymic, then the first name, then name of the street. The field assistant will then take both the previous file and the registration form into the field and confront the applicant with the material. With the applicant he will establish the facts and indicate the rules that no beneficiary may receive assistance for more than one house. And since he was one of the beneficiaries under the first application, this rule excludes him from being registered now.

Oksana Korevina declared that this sort of double application occurs, not frequently, but from time to time; and this is why the office always as a matter of routine checks every application against the previous files.

In 2005, in the application forms it is indicated to the beneficiaries that they enter into the program as an entity and that this bars each of them from applying again.

5. The complainant who involves the “foreigner” On a field trip to Zmeyskaya on June 21, a man comes and sits next to me. He wants to tell me something and he gives me a piece of paper. With a gesture I indicate that he should give the paper to Oksana, but he insists that this is for me. Nonna tells him that Oksana deals with applications. But he insists that I should have the letter. This is about him and his story. Next day I gave the letter to Oksana and she told me that this man has been on the waiting list for a house. He is the head of a family of 6. They have a house that is in a very poor and unsanitary condition. They desperately need a healthy house. DRC has promised him help on the condition that he tears down his present building, leaves the foundation and then DRC would provide material for a new building. Until now he has not been willing to follow this procedure. He has just wanted repairs on his present building, and this will not solve the problem. The present building cannot be repaired to comply with building regulation. Oksana has argued with him over this a few times and now he has taken the opportunity to deliver his complaint to the lady from abroad, since he obviously felt that a person from abroad would have more influence.

Consulting with Oksana I decided to deal with the case as if I were a Danish civil servant receiving a complaint over one of my subordinates. This of cause was not the real situation. But this is how he perceived it, and hence the best back-up of the DRC office would be to play along. I wrote a letter explaining him the situation and saying that I found no grounds for altering the decision. The letter was delivered to him in person on our next field trip to Zmeyskaya. He did not right off accept the rejection, so I had to enter into a conversation with him, arguing that DRC could not bend our rules for him, since, if we did this we would have to do it for others as well and we would not live up to the good technical standards of DRC.

6. Dagh-Koh family. Visitation of cases in-between registration In October NE has informed me orally of a very vulnerable family in Darg-Koh which they met during their qualitative survey there. As they explained to me the family is presently living in somebody’s uninhabitable house which earlier has been used for pigs. The monitors gave me the following information: the family of refugees from Georgia (1991) has bought a very small house in Kardjin where they had been living for two years. Then their house was burnt and one of the children died in the fire, another child was damaged by fire. For the being the family doesn’t have any documents since all of them were burnt in the fire. The family moved to Darg-Koh where they were given this uninhabitable house by one of the villagers. Later their daughter married but her husband appeared to be a drug addict and she divorced him having returned to her parents with two babies. Presently the family has 7 member which are: Gurtsishvili Tamara – mother

45 Torozov Ivan – father 1960 yob Torozov David – son 1982 yob Torozova – daughter 1985 yob Torozov Robert – son 1996 yob Torozov Vadim – grandson 2003 yob Torozova Irina – granddaughter 2005 yob

I asked the NE to prepare this information in written form and to pass it to the shelter program co-ordinator Oksana Korevina. Later they sent me an e-mail and I passed it to Oksana. I talked with Oksana asking if she can help them with documents and land allocation and she promised to consider possibilities. When in some time I asked Oksana of any steps concerning this family she explained that she would send a monitor there when they finish with distribution in order to help them get their papers ready for registration. Since it may take long time and this family is in extreme need and somebody has to deal with it now I passed the information on the family to UNHCR employee Fatima Dzigkaeva. She took the information and passed it to a relevant person. NE on their part said that they would try to arrange documents for this family through NGO “Young lawyers”.

7. “Give me my papers or money back” In September and October this type of visitor is a frequent guest in the office: One morning in September a woman comes to the office and complains that she has not been admitted into the program. She is very upset and she works herself up to screaming in a high-pitched voice. She has paid money for being registered, because she had to provide DRC with original documents that DRC copied for the file. Now this has been all in vain and she wants her money back. She is upset that she has had expenses and had nothing in return. Oksana explains to her that her papers showed that she had gone from Tiblisi to a place in Russia different from North Ossetia, where she and her husband had an apartment. Only later she had settled in North Ossetia. Moreover, it was now clear that she had sold her apartment in Tiblisi and had been able to collect the money and deposit it in her bank. This means that her travel from Georgia has been well planed and that she was not forced to flee. She claims that she had lost her money because the bank collapsed. Oksana’a argument is that this does not have a bearing on her economic situation, since her husband has a good and well-paid job. She will not accept the assessment that she does not qualify as a beneficiary. She demands to have her papers. Malchas now intervenes and explains that she already has her original papers. Now she gets furious and screams for the copy of her papers. She does not accept that DRC has any kind of papers or information on her when she is not being admitted into the program. She leaves unwillingly and all the way down the corridor goes on screaming.

8. Prigorodniy case A woman working in the Migration Service came with a refugee man to the Vladikavkaz office. Oksana explained the main eligibility criteria and described how the housing program works. it turned out that the man is living in Prigorodniy district and consequently can not be registered as an applicant. Oksana explained the reason why he cannot be included into the program but she took his data having promised to let him know if the policy towards the area of conflict changes.

9. Complaints mechanism A woman came in the Vladikavkaz office with intention to find out the reason of her family being rejected from the program. Oksana explained the reason, which apparantly was that the foundation was laid out for a house too large for DRC standards. However, the woman was not satisfied and started discussion of her living conditions. Finally she said that she wants to complain and asked for a relevant person. Oksana answered that she was a coordinator of the program, and hence she was the person to address. Eventually the woman left; but the rejection was not taken lightly.

3.3.8. Other Institutions: Collaboration Practice 3.3.8.1. Memorandum of Understanding The selection procedures, the planning and building of the houses, the writing up of new proposals are all activities that bring the office into close collaboration with Federal Migration Service (FMS), with local and district authorities, with republican infrastructure institutions seated in Vladikavkaz as well as local and International governmental orgaizations, among them primarily the UNHCR. In May 2005 DRC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UNHCR, UNDP and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, SDC. Of the four partners only the three are active in assisting

46 the refugee/IDP population in North Ossetia. At the time of writing SDC was still planning their assistance,18 not having been able to make headway with their plans, directly to a large extent at the transformation of apartment buildings.

3.3.8.2. Practical collaboration For the practical administration eventually the understanding among the Memorandum partners should set itself through in a coordination of resources. This coordination is a part of the 2006 action plan for DRC shelter department in North Ossetia, and it is expressed explicitly in the strategy paper.19 Examples of this are the concerted efforts in securing that assistance resources are being brought to the best possible use. After each year’s July/August selection of beneficiaries the DRC coordinator supplies the UNHCR with their list of beneficiaries selected for the coming season. Likewise the UNHCR hand over their list of newly selected beneficiaries. This is being done in order to prevent beneficiaries from receiving double assistance. (see above 3.3.3.) Also DRCs offers its list of selected beneficiaries to the FMS for the Service to check if any of the individual has received help under the federal program. In that case they will not be eligible for help from DRC. The DRC coordinator has observed an improvement in the collaboration with both partners: In 2004 FMS returned to DRC with an answer within a week, while in DRC taking a month and a half to do the same check. In 2004 DRC did not respond to UNHCR’s request for information concerning DRC, while in 2005 the same exchange took place within a few days. A rapid exchange of information is crucial, since house construction cannot start before DRC has ascertained that the exact identity of the beneficiaries for the season.

3.3.8.3. Working Group Another example of the collaboration is a working group for which UNHCR has the secretariate. One of the aims of the working group is to look into social integration. The latest meeting of the working group was in June 2005. It ended with intentions of the participants to discuss the information on the different databases of the collaborating partners. Since information on social integration has not previously been given much specific attention, it is safe to say that the working group is at a very early stage of the examination of this issue and has not yet engaged in a construction approach to the issue. Participation in this working group is a part of DRC strategy for 2006.20

3.3.8.4. Ad Hoc Sharing of Experience A specific collaboration practice can take place as an ad hoc exchange of experience, as was the case with a seminar in May 2005, involving the four agencies signing the memorandum of understanding (See above 3.3.8.1). The seminar resulted in the report with the title Multi-agency Collaboration on Shelter Options for IDPs, Refugees and Forced Migrants in The North Caucasus: Lessons Learned and Ways Forward. The report concluded that each of the agencies activities were complementary and each had their individual advantages and drawbacks. The major conclusion was that a new formular was now required which would accommodate a variety of approaches to shelter and beneficiaries needs; would draw efficiently on each agency’s mandate; and could operate freely within the targeted geographic recovery areas as the primary sites. Within the new formular there should also be an approach to improving the living conditions in the worst of the collective centers

18 DRC, Strategy for No-A Shelter Project Development 2006, Vladikavkaz August 12 2005, p. 1 19 DRC, Strategy for NO-A Shelter Project Development 2006, Vladikavkaz 2006. 20 DRC, Strategy for NO-A Shelter Project Development 2006, Vladikavkaz August 12 2005, p. 2.

47 which means that the possibility of adjusting and transforming collective centres into permanent, substantial housing is indicated as a possibility.

The agencies agreed that there was a need for a clear, joint strategy, with regard to the various roles. A draft joint strategy and the above mentioned Memorandum of understanding were elaborated and it was understood that as soon as agencies had benefited from further discussion and become clearer in their orientation, implementation arrangements between agencies will be further defined and finalized within the MOU.21 At the beginning of November 2005 a seminar was held, where the agencies exchanged information on their individual building standards.

3.3.8.5. New Proposals During summer 2005 DRC NO-A Shelter office was involved in writing of proposals for infrastructure in two villages, Mairamadag and Zmeyskaya. The proposals were directed towards UNDP as a donor. The projects created a close working relationship between DRC NO-A Shelter and the local administration as well as relations to the Land Structure Committee. Due to cut-backs in the UNDP Moscow office (involving fraud in this office) and subsequent lack of donor support the projects will not be implemented within the stipulated time.

Seeking to mend an untenable infrastructure situation.22

Photo No. 35. Zmeyskaya village, needs Photo No. 36. Mairamadag Village. Negotiating assessment. SER coordinator Elena Goldin watersupply project overlapping both refugee takes statements from the refugees. settlement and old town.

21 SDC, UNHCR, UNDP and DRC, Multi-agency Collaboration on Shelter Options for IDPs, Refugees and Forced Migrants in The North Caucasus: Lessons Learned and Ways Forward, North Caucasus Working Paper No. 1, May 2005, p. 31 22 DRC North Caucaus has the intention to deliver future housing projects with basic infrastructure and overlap of Livelihood and shelter.DRC, Strategy for No-A Shelter Project Development 2006, Vladikavkaz August 12 2005, p. 2.

48 4. Reports 4.1. New Education Report to DRC 4.1.1. Overview over the refugee settlements During its collection and analysis of interview New Education collected an overview of the refugee settlements in the various districts in order to provide a general characterization of the local town patterns, infrastructure, social and economic conditions and institutions.

4.1.1.1. Kirovsky District Kirovsky district is the district farthest away from Vladikavkaz, its main town of El-Khotovo situated 65 kilometers from the main city. Together with Ardonsky it is also the district with the largest number of refugee families. As is seen from the description above of the shelter program most of the refugee settlements in Kirovsky district are towns/villages, where refugees live on plots scattered into the village or towns. However, the bulk of the refugee population is located in Zmeyskaya village, in a compact settlement there, where a new street has been outlined, the refugees to be allotted land along this street. 58 families are located in the compact settlement of Zmeyskaya. Thus this settlement is the largest DRC refugee settlement. The settlement also contains refugee families not receiving help from DRC. However, this does not change the main feature of the settlement, namely that of being a compact refugee settlement.

In Kirovsky district the village administration was well aware of the refugee conditions. Apart form the direct involvement in the allocation of land, which is common procedure of all of the districts, the administration had partly financed some new street projects in the villages housing refugees; and the administration had arranged regular transportation (minibuses). A part of this awareness could possibly be ascribed to an early interest for the refugee problem on the part of the district administration, since the previous prefect had been a refugee from South Ossetia himself, arriving to Kirovsky district in the second wave of refugees in 1957.23

When it came to local administration in the towns and villages the administration also seemed well informed and in some cases active in the integration process. In Darg-Koh the administration helps finding vacant houses for the refugees, they distributed free school uniforms and textbooks, sometimes products to needy families. In Kardzin the administration was aware of assisting the refugee families in educational matters. In Zmeyskaya the head of the village administration took an effort to stay in close contact with the families so that he could assist them.

Interviews with professionals in the refugee town/villages related the professional knowledge that the refugees were well integrated. The professionals in El-Khotovo indicated that the refugees have their booths at the market and they seem to have positions in the Ministry of the interior and the customs. In Darg-Koh the professionals reported that the village administration pays a lot of attention to the refugee issue. To some extent the professional knowledge is being contradicted by other information: The employment situation is not good. In the villages a large number of the refugees live off the old age pension of the old generation in the family. In El-Khotovo people go to Vladikavlaz to work. This can be supplemented by the information that in all the town/villages the kolhozes do formally exist, while the land has been given to farmers to farm on their own.

23 Interview with district employee….???

49 Concerning infrastructure the situation is acceptable by local standards only in El-Khotovo. In the villages the overview reports of lack of roads, no sewage in the streets, lack of gas supply for house heating. As far as water supply is concerned, all villages have water supply, except for Zmeyskaya, where some of houses of the compact refugee settlement do not have water supply. As for social institutions, again El-Khotovo stands out, having a good coverage. In the villages generally the schools are functioning, in some cases there is a small club or a house of culture. These institutions are the focus of scattered activities gathering the population, whereas kindergartens seems absent or functioning only in a formal sense.

4.1.1.2. Ardonsky District In Ardonsky district, some refugee settlements are scattered into the existing town structure. However, the dominant impression is the compact settlement. This is the case for some of the houses in Ardon town and in Krasnagor. The distribution of houses makes Ardon the main location of DRC housing in this region. Although in Ardon a small fraction of the refugee houses are scattered in the town, both in Ardon and in the villages the dominant feature of the refugee settlements in this district is the one. The district administration seemed to have only scanty knowledge about the refugees and their situation. Likewise the village/town administrations seemed less active than the administrations in Kirovsky district. Only the administration in Michurino village appeared to take meetings with the refugees where they would have the chance to voice their problems. In Kosta village the administration was aware of some of the main refugee problems.

The employment situation is bad in all of Ardonsky district, however, interviews indicated that it was more difficult for the refugees to find a job than it is for locals. In this context it should be noted that the Ardonsky villages are located between 24 to 55 Kilometers from Vladikavkaz, while the main district town of Ardon in a distance of 48 kolimeters. In all cases route busses and in some cases mini busses provide means of transportation. In all the locations in Ardonsky district there is a kolhoz.

Professional knowledge in Ardonsky district indicated that there is low integration of refugees. The professionals in Kosta underline that the rights of the refugees are respected. They are not restrained and they receive medical help. This is probably typical for all of the villages. However, the Kosta professional also asserted that the refugees have poor living conditions. Ardon and Kosta village also had a house of culture, while this facility was not available in the rest of the villages. Here the village club could function as a locus of interest groups.

As in Kirovsky district the infrastructure to the compact refugee settlements is problematic. There is no road to the refugee settlements, and no sewage. In some cases the refugee settlements have no water supply at all, in the rest only some of the refugees have water supply. The same is true for gas.As for social institutions, all settlements have schools, but there is no information of them being particularly active in social work apart from the above mentioned club activities. Save Ardon town there are no playgrounds, sports centers or kindergartens.

4.1.1.3. Pravoberishny District The Pravoberishny district is the district, where the main town, Beslan is closest to Vladikavkaz. This town also provides the airport access to Vladikavkaz proper. In all the involved town/villages transportation is well arranged and together with a minor boost to the economy partly due to a large vodka production plant partly to influx of activities after the tragedy on September 1st 2004, the employment situation in this district is better than in the others.

50

Refugee settlements are mixed compact settlements and scattered houses, apart from Beslan with only scattered refugee houses (26 families) and the small village of Brout with one compact settlement on the outskirts of the village, consisting of 8 families. This distribution makes Beslan the major Provoberishny location for DRC housing projects.

The district administration has full knowledge of the refugee situation. Nevertheless, no particular active involvement is reported. The same goes for the town and village administrations. Professional knowledge in this district refers to a general assessment of the local population that the refugees are well settled into the communities and that they enjoy equal rights.

As for infrastructure, in all the villages there is only a main road to the refugee settlements, and there is no sewage system. All settlements have good water and gas supply. The social infrastructure also is relatively well developed: In all town/villages there are schools, kindergartens and a house of culture, but except from in Beslan there are no sports grounds. There are Kolhozes, but as in Kirovsky district, the land is farmed out.

4.1.1.4. Alaghirsky District Alaghirsky district is a neighboring district to Vladikavkaz. However, the main town Alaghir is situated 60 kilometers from the city, just a little closer than El-Khotovo. Apart from Alaghir that has only 3 refugee families, the refugee settlements in this district consist entirely of compact settlements on the outskirts of the village. The employment situation in Alaghirsky district is not good and often depending on the ability to find a job in Vladikavkaz. There is good transportation from the district to Vladikavkaz. All the town/villages in Alaghir have a kolhoz, the land being farmed out to private farmers.

The district administration seemed well informed about the refugee problems and the same was the case for the town and village administrations. However, apart from Mairamadag the town/village administration took no independent initiatives to solve the problems. The Mairamadag village administrator actively sought to help with land allocation in difficult cases, with registration for housing, with provision of textbooks for refugee children, etc.

Professional knowledge about integration estimated that the integration was coming along in a normal way.

As for technical infrastructure the road situation is similar to that of Pravoberishny district, that in the villages there is one main access road to the refugee settlements and no sewage system. There is gas supply, but not all refugees in the compact settlements have access to gas and the same is the case for water supply.

Concerning the social infrastructure, again the schools are functioning. When talking about other social institutions, again apart from the main town of Alaghir, they are rudimentary or absent. Alaghir, Mairamadag and Nogkau have a house of culture, in Mairamadag combined with a library. Apart from Mairamadag the villages have no kindergarten, and neither of them have no playgrounds. Dzaurikau is the only village with a sports center.

51

Photo No. 37. Mairamadag compact settlement: Photo No. 38. Dazurikau compact settlement. No road. Gaz pipe ends, but buildings continue. In view of lack of gaz heating, the family has No water supply. Gathered firewood for the winter.

4.1.1.5. Overall Characterization of Districts: Summary The first thing that stands out when characterizing the refugee housing is that outside the main district towns, the compact settlement is the preferred town plan solution. The next thing is that the compact settlements are being established without simultaneous establishment of technical urban infrastructure such as roads, water supply, sewage and gas for heating.

Educational institutions on a grade school level are present. And in many cases they offer interest groups that could be helpful in a social integration context. But apart from this there is only scanty supply of social institutions when going outside the main district town.

The employment situation is generally bad, for both refugees and local. However, the districts and settlements with closeness to Vladikavkaz have better conditions in this respect.

There are large differences in the way local authorities deal with the refugees, from lack of knowledge and interest to active help. Although this is an overview and not a though examination, there seems to be a correlation between a positive knowledge and activity of the administration and the relatively better grade that professionals will award to the progress of integration. Also the district with the best employment situation seemed to be more successful dealing with integration.

Apart from schools there is only scanty supply of social/cultural institutions that could habor integration activities. The employment situation in itself could create a pressure on local- refugee relations. The fact that in three out of the four districts the kolhozes are either not functioning or have farmed out their land adds to this situation, since the communities are deprived with this means of integration via a common workplace. The overview in itself does not warrant to express any correlation between integration and the different design of town plans (refugees in scattered settlements of compact settlements)

52 4.1.2. New Education on State of Integration 4.1.2.1. General situation The first thing to do when characterizing the integration of refugees into society is to consider the problems they had to solve when they arrived in North Ossetia: (1) Search of housing; (2) Search of proper job; (3) Placement of children into kindergarten and school; (4) Obtaining of citizenship; (5) Obtaining of propiska, (registration of home address); (6) Receiving of medical help. The DRC housing program has relevance for bringing all of those preconditions into place. However, as indicated in 1.2. the road to integration is long and to achieve full integration a number of other factors are relevant.

4.1.2.2. Legal Integration For the legal integration some of the indicators were: Availability of a public policy facilitating the migration problems solution; lack of negative dynamics in the criminal situation with the influx of refugees; refugees actually obtaining their formal legal rights in the process of obtaining citizenship and propiska.

The result of the inquiry showed that some refugees had experienced difficulties in obtaining citizenship. They told that they had found it difficult to get all the required documents and certificates together, or it was impossible to restore the documents that had been lost. Also it could be difficult having to apply to different authorities, seeing them several times on the matter and having to translate documents. Some suspected that authorities’ delay in issuing documents was deliberate and there was a need to pay bribes.

In the words of one respondent in Alaghirsky district:”My rights were violated when citizenship documents were obtained. I applied to a court to obtain a citizenship but didn’t manage to get it. Then a decree was enacted according to which all IDPs of 1991 were given citizenship”.

However, only a very small number expressed these complaints, and in two of the examined districts none of the respondents had encountered difficulties.24 This means that the qualitative interviews seemed to indicate that the first precondition for a legal integration was in place. The next thing was whether the refugees obtained the rights that legally would be the corollary of citizenship. This seemed to be the case. Both local people and the refugees themselves indicated that the refugees had equal opportunities in obtaining medical help. And only a small part of the refugees had found problems in obtaining medical help. As the refugees state social pension as one of the main income, 25 we can deduct that this sort of social service is provided on an equal basis.

In terms of public education one main obstacle to the refugees when not having a permanent housing is their inability to plan the education of their children. This obstacle is overcome with a permanent residence.26

In fact, to a large part the legal integration hinges on the question if former refugees, upon acquiring their citizenship obtain the same rights as locals. Here the results show that the majority of both forced migrants and locals think that all of them have equal rights. But examples of the contrary maybe found. Some respondents relate that they were cheated out of their rights, as for instance a

24 New Education, Final report 25 New Education, Final report. 26 New Education, Final report.

53 man telling, “My rights were violated during land allocation. I was supposed to receive it, but nobody remembered about me”.27 In general the forced migrant had little exact knowledge about their rights.28A typical answer to the question of the protection of equal rights could be for instance: “Nobody restrains our rights, but I don’t know any laws protecting them.”29 While there was a consensus that forced migrants and local had equal rights, on the other hand forced migrants felt that they had a number of difficulties that the authorities did not pay attention to. However, this is a different problem from the issue of actual legal rights. And it covers a large variety of problems that could be couched in the terms of legal rights, but in this context more rightly should be dealt with under other headlines, such as economic integration (see below 5.1.2.3).

Concerning the criminal situation the migrants generally think that this has not become worse with the influx of refugees, while among local people it is possible to find respondents voicing concerns about this: “We have robberies and hooliganism. For example recently we had a case when refugees stole and then sold wheels from a car that fell down the river. Local people wouldn’t do that. Another recent case: refugees stole a cow from a local man and then slaughtered it.” Other local professions, however, did not find any evidence that the criminal situation got worse with the influx of refugees.30 And it is noteworthy that the critical remark on migrants being involved in crime more testifies to a specific practice of attitude towards other people’s values than it asserts a rise in crime rates.

4.1.2.3. Economical integration Economical integration implies a number of different factors ensuring the migrants obtaining a place in the economic structures, mainly the possibilities of employment or other steady means of achieving a source of income. But also other indicator can enlighten us on the economical integration of the migrants: Are they able to make improvements on their houses, such as general maintainance, interior decorating and furniture, extensions, street wall, or brick façade, etc.? Do they have an equal access to enjoy the benefits of public works and infrastructure, such as roads, gas and water supply, electricity?

On the issue of employment in all districts the respondents indicated that the employment situation was bad, for both migrants and locals. Pravoberishny was luckier in this respect, since the respondents here showed considerable more optimism than respondents in other districts.

The prevailing impression was that the migrants live off their social pensions and from what they can sell in the market of what they gather in the woods and on the commons. Both locals and migrants indicate this, and there is also a general feeling the migrants are more active in taking up challenges and untraditional tasks, as well as jobs not wanted by locals. The consequence is that there is a division on the labor market between migrants and locals, something that does not advance integration in the long run. Migrant trade in the market, while professional and public positions seem to be more difficult for them to get into. To what extent this division is widespread a qualitative study cannot tell us. For this we will have to rely on a quantitative survey.

The situation in the urban infrastructure shows that refugee compact settlements suffer insufficiencies in terms of proper infrastructure, such as roads, gas, water supply or sewers. This

27 New Education, Alaghirsky Report, p. 12. 28 New Education, Final report. 29 New Education, Report on Pravoberishy, p. 14. 30 New Education, Pilot Report on Mairamadag, p. 14

54 means that this part of town takes on other features than the rest of the town. It also means that some services are not available and that the migrants need to use time and resources on tasks that locals have.

An example that can illustrate what we are talking about is the statement from the women in Alaghir that tell that “We wrote to Dzasokhov and Putin because of the lack of water supply, but there is no result. We had a meeting with Dzasohov’s assistant, but we still carry water in barrels. Where else should we go? Whom else should we write?” or, in another statement:” The government doesn’t listen to our problems. We are screaming about them”31

Especially in the winter season cars do not have access to the compact settlements because of mud and holes in the road. This not only affects private transportation, but also ambulance service. Daily transportation to workplaces also becomes difficult.

Lack of water supply and gas means that migrants must seek alternatives. This requires time and considerable work effort that therefore will not be spent on regular employment for wages. We might say that the migrants do “free labor” for society, carrying water and chopping wood for their own heating and cooking. Lack of roads also indirectly affects migrants’ access to public transportation and thus negatively influences their job opportunities and their children’s access to school. This impression we get already from the overview (see 5.1.1.5.). The interviews qualify this with refugees hammering on an on about this problem.

In the final summary all the districts show considerable migrant comments on this problem. Interestingly enough though, in only one district we do not hear this criticism to any large amount, and this is in the Kirovsky district, even though the Kirovsky district has one large compact settlement, in Zmeyskaya village where this problem otherwise would have though to be endemic. The reason for this absence is simply that no Zmeyskaya migrants were interviewed, since the DRC shelter department had vetoed any visits there due to the department’s fear of refugee frustration because of failure to explain the falling-through of a proposal for financing of a new road (see above 2.3.8.5). Therefore the only compact settlement in the district did not have a voice in the qualitative study. This also warrants us to conclude that the lack of technical infrastructure represents a large gap in the economic integration and that this touches upon all 4 districts, to a smaller or larger degree.

4.1.2.4. Social – demographic integration The social demographic integration signifies to what extent the migrants have living conditions that make it possible for them to have a regular, healthy life, bringing up children, caring for their relatives, maintaining a regular family life. This aspect of integration has a legal side to it, of course, since we could couch the problem in legal terms such as rights to medical help and other health service, the right to family life under The European Convention of Human Rights art. 8. However, in this context we focus on the factual aspect of the matter, leaving aside a legal assessment.

Migrant respondents testify to the fact that they have suffered a great deal due to the change of climate, moving from the southern slopes of the Caucasus to the colder Northern side. The question is whether the housing has increased their wellbeing and family living conditions.

31 New Education, Report on Alaghir, p. 11-12.

55

Both locals and migrants generally believe that there has been no increase in the birth rate. As is seen above in the overview provided in the appendices section, this is true. However, the downward trend has been somewhat halted, even though the figures do not tell us the reason for this. And we can find respondents believing that there is an increase in the birth rate. Interestingly enough, though, the social events of birth and marriage are generally tied to the economic and political situation, to the ability to provide for your family or personal grief.

The respondents are evenly divided between a group that found that housing had increased marriages, and another group who could see no such positive change. There was no difference between migrants and refugees in this respect.

The family pattern, however, in many cases had not assumed the form that the refugees were accustomed to. In many cases several generations or extended families live under the same roof, although they did not consider this their natural pattern. However, in order to receive the desired accommodation, they had to adjust.

From the qualitative study it is not possible to say how widely spread the custom of intermarriage between migrants and local has become. Answers are seen that so in either direction:

“All our boys marry local girls. There are a lot of mixed marriages” on the one hand, or “there are intermarriages, but not many. I know that one refugee married a local man and they divorced in a year, because she was too active”.32

4.1.2.5. Cultural integration Cultural integration is a vague and ambiguous term that we have chosen to apply to specific factors and their relation to traditions and customs of the migrant group of people. On the outset we would expect perfect conditions for a full cultural integration of the migrants, since they belong to the same ethnic group. However, it turned out not to be as simple as that. One striking factor is that many of the migrants speak a language different from locals. While locals speak Russian or Ossetian, many of the migrants speak only Georgian. Another factor is social customs related to celebrations while the migrant do not respect the more archaic Nart customs. (See appendix). Differences in customs will set the migrant group apart from the locals and provide a structural obstacle to social interaction between locals and migrants, thus hinder integration. Social interaction as a part of daily life and celebrations, and hence also indicators of the cultural integration.

The socio-cultural integration indicates attested to a presence of interaction between migrants and locals. Migrants indicate that they have friends among locals. But many also indicated that they did not. Interaction was for instance wedding and funerals. We also see respondents stressing that differences in culture limit the social interaction. Communication is not the same as being friendly.

4.1.2.6. Psycho-Social Integration Psycho-social integration gives the answer to such questions as: how actively do the migrants work to overcome their difficulties; what methods can the migrants employ to actively seek integration? Also the question of how to deal with the offer that DRC represents, dealing with other agencies, and the ability to interact with for instance rejection from DRC, ability to cope with changes etc will

32 New Education, Provobesrishny Report, p. 13.

56 be indicators of the level of psycho-social integration. Many respondents indicate that the refugees are more active than locals. On the other hand they are also not to the same extent participating in local public life, which perhaps means that they limit themselves to deal with their own problems. This coincided with their more individualistic lifestyle or even the consumerism that one respondent mentioned.

Reactions to the DRC program show the same active approach. However, it is also noteworthy that many of the respondents had never heard of DRC, even those that had received help from DRC. Or they confused DRC with other organizations. People that had been rejected from the program in some cases understood why, in other cases were entirely baffled and felt insulted. Whether this is an inability of the migrants to cope or a lack of effort on DRC’s side to explain in a timely and proper way, is perhaps difficult to say. However, it is a fact that DRC.de facto plays a significant part in the integration process in the minds of people by its merelt serviceing the refugees.

4.1.2.7. Public Opinion, Values and Politics We asked directly whether our respondents though that the locals wanted the migrants to return to South Ossetia. The answer we got both from locals and the migrants themselves clearly indicated that some people had an inclination in this direction. Again, while a qualitative study cannot tell us anything about the extent of this viewpoint, it can offer us some explanations as to why locals think that South Ossetians should return. The reasons that we found was, for instance that the attitude of the migrants was that of consumerism, they exploited nature for their own gain (collecting mushrooms, nuts and berries), they were ill-bred; they violated local customs and did not apply Ossetian rituals in social events. Direct assaults on refugees on refugees were not registred, apart form verbal taunting them with exclamations such as “Kudarze” or “Go home”.33 Interestingly enough, locals also found that the migrants had more children than locals, while the migrants themselves found that the family patterns did not differ in this respect. Here, the fear of being demographically overcome by “the others” is apparent.

Also a number of locals found it noteworthy that migrants differed in lifestyle in ways that we would describe as being more modern. The case of the local man divorcing the migrant woman is an example. The local man did not want to stand in the shade of his more outspoken wife. Also locals expressed disgust over migrant’s lack of respect for old people. And a migrant woman expressed difficulties in finding her platform in North Ossetian society, not being able to interpret the social patterns and see what she was supposed to do. This public opinion has a bearing on politics, of course, since it could put a pressure on local communities against special programs for migrants, in order to ignite envy. As for the more modern lifestyle of the migrants, this places a genuine dilemma into the road to integration: We are faced with the integration demand that the migrant woman subordinates herself to the man and the younger stands back for the older person. On the other hand this demands violates the equal rights of the individual. This means that the influx of migrants could step up modernity in North Ossetian society and possibly create some cultural conflicts along the way.

4.1.3. New Education on Points of Priority At the time of the closing of the project New Education had not prepare their own report. Hence the organization’s priorities had not completely materialized. However the organization expressed interest in the practicing of new methods and the specific problems that the qualitative study had

33 Kudarze is a demeaning expression for Georgian.

57 uncovered. In the work of the near future NE would focus on the tolerance and social integration issues that they had been confronted with: the interaction and communication between the two groups, the locals and the new-comers, the cultural differences; on the capacity and potential of the educational and social institutions for the building up of a common understanding; on the communication to partners and others on the social integration issues. NE would hope for DRC to extend the information on project findings to relevant international agencies, among them possible donors for a program that could supplement the housing program with social integration elements.

Moreover, New Education informed the consultant that they would stage a round table meeting on their work, inviting DRC to present its side of the work. New Education suggested DRC took into consideration adopting a step-by –step accountability practice in this work with local communities, beneficiaries and applicants to the program.

4.2. Institute Report to DRC 4.2.1. General information on Institute Survey The Institute of humanitarian studies conducted quantitative interviews in 4 districts, interviewing 325 people in each district on the basis of a structured interview guide.34 Table 5 shows the villages targeted for interviews.

Table 5 Villages and towns included in Institute survey Kirovsky district DRC Housing Scattered DRC Compact Other housing Scattered Other housing Compact El-Khotovo x x Zmeyskaya x x Dagh-Koh x x Kardzin x x Stav-Dort x Komsamolska x Ardonsky district DRC Housing Scattered DRC Compact Other housing Scattered Other housing Compact Ardon x x x Kosta x x Kardgaron x x Kirovo x x Michurino x x Fiagdon x Alaghirski District DRC Housing Scattered DRC Compact Other housing Scattered Other housing Compact Alaghir x x Dzaurikau x x Mairamadag x x Tsurau x Biragzang x Pravoberishni dist. DRC Housing Scattered DRC Compact Other housing Scattered Other housing Compact Beslan x x Olginskoe x Khumalag x x x Radzog x x x Farn x Brout x x

The table shows that the Institute was set to conduct interviews both in towns and villages with a DRC refugee population and in towns and villages where DRC did not have housing projects. In fact the Institute had to omit Komsamolska due to worry of angry reactions from refugees.

34 Time has not allowed the consultant to work with the results or fully sharing them with the interested parties.

58

Students of North Ossetian State University together with their colleagues from the North Ossetian Institute of Humanitarian and Social studies carried out this research. This part of work was subdivided on a basic and pilot research. Within the framework of pilot research there were inspected 50 respondents in the town Alagire. The aim was to work on the questionnaire points to avoid possible misunderstanding. Research stages were the following: 1 working on the questionnaire, making excerpts 2 holding an experts meeting 3 carrying out an interrogation 4 analysis of obtained information

The sample consisted of 1300 respondents.

An approximate parity was held in all districts except Kirov district as this small district is almost completely included in to DRC Shelter program. In all districts the interrogation was held in district towns, big, average and small areas. Furthermore, the questioning was also carried out in the mountain part of the republic (v. Mizur). It is significant, that during the interrogation the customer from Kirovsky district has imposed restrictions connected with the current situation.

325 respondents were interrogated in a random sampling. All inhabitants were interrogated, not only refugees and the forced migrants. There are standard parameters of interrogation: gender, age, ethnic group and educational level. There is a high standard educational level in North Ossetia. Therefore, even in rural populated areas people with specialized secondary and higher education prevail. That was confirmed by the pilot interrogation. Hence this criterion is sufficiently specific for the districts. In the following main results are reported. Grafphs of illustration are in the appendice section of this reprot.

4.2.2. Composition of Sample 4.2.2.1. Ethnic Composition Rural districts differ from the others in ethnic structure homogeneity (from 83% of Ossetian population in Ardonsky district, to 92 % in Alagirsky district. At the same time the 2nd ethnic group (Russians) constitutes from 14 % in Ardonsky district to 6% in Alagirsky district. Other nationalities are only sparcely represented. Because of this 6 respondents from Ardonsky district representing other ethnic groups were referred to Russians to avoid statistical error. On the whole there are 89% of Ossetians and 11% of Russians.

4.2.2.2. Age and Gender Age and gender structure in the rural districts reminds an inverted "bell", that explains the domination of elderly people. Apart from the negative natural increase, these areas are characterized by significant youth outflow to the capital of republic as well as to outside the region. Therefore refugees and forced migrants, to some degree being economically active part of the society, change this structure. Although this is good for a settlement, some part of local residents, especially elderly people, receive this as a painful experience.

Women dominate in the population (53%), and this domination is observed not only in the older age groups, but also among middle-aged people. At that the number of men are noticeably less than half in district towns, while there are more men in age-groups of 20-40 in the smaller locations (women

59 leave the villages first as they are more social mobile), this also stimulate tensions and threaten demographic development of villages.

Analysis was done according to the following criteria: gender, age, settlements, educational qualification, settlements’ division into the groups, participating in DRC shelter program, by districts. Ethnic component showed, that in the rural districts of North Ossetia, the ethnic division does not influence the answers. Answers from the Russians did not differ from those of other nationalities. On the one hand it testifies an insignificance of interethnic opposition; on the other hand it reflects specific a symbiosis of cultures and including into this symbiosis other cultural components that the local community might perceive as being different. This is supported by the fact that otherwise the survey shows strong differences in some of the answers.

Most obvious from the basic demographic informaiton is the fact that there is a development of migration away form the 4 districts.

4.2.2.3. Language Language is an important factor in the integration. Hence the following fact is drawing attention: In spite of the ethnic Ossetians predominance (88,8%), the number of those who prefer to speak Ossetian with relatives is very small (76,3 %). At the same time the number of people willing to speak Russian is increasing. The group of Ossetian speakers is much higher in villages than in district towns. In the villages it is close to 84 %, while in district towns it is hardly over 73%. Also the choice of language is affected by the age of interviewee: the younger he/she chooses Russian more often. In age group 18-24 only 70 % prefer this language.

The rest of the respondents selected another language (Georgian). They are also refugees and forced migrants from the internal districts of Georgia. Because of this complicated lingual situation they experience additional stress. For quicker integration, refugees have to communicate with their village neighbors in Ossetia, while they must speak Russian when they go to district towns Vladikavkas. Moreover only the ability to speak Russian gives an opportunity to graduate from the University.

One of the important factors for the choice of language is the educational qualification. Since there is no secondary and highest education in the native language, only 67 % of citizens with higher education choose Ossetian for communication with relatives. Hence the language situation gives an insight into at least two problems facing refugees: Older refugees are marginalized in relation to the local, mostly Ossetian or Russian speaking communities. Younger people experience the stress of having to attend educational institutions where they must apply another language than the one they speak at home.

4.2.2.4. Economic Integration Economic integration of the refugees is prevented by their dire economic situation compared to the locals. Almost half of them mentioned that there income was barely enough for buying goods and utilities. Prosperity is correlation to the level of integration. The higher the education the higher the prosperity. This is a factor that separates refugees and locals. The same factor comes into play in relation to the labor market. The higher education the more likely a person thinks it is possible to find a job. An additional factor hampers the refugees’ possibility of entering into the labor market: 35% of the respondents told that having acquaintances was a major factor in getting a job, 38% found that money was the most important factor. The reference to money indicates the possibility of

60 corruption being involved in job employments. In both cases these mechanisms will tend to keep refugees out of the labor market. Only 17 % of the respondents though that professionalism was the main qualification in getting a job.

Trading was named to be the main area where refugees prefer to work. Such a similarity should be paid attention because the trading is considered to be the most corrupted area and concentration of IDPs activities here leads to forming of negative stereotypes. ( See above 4.1.2.7.).

4.2.2.5. Legal Integration While refugees formally receive the right to medical health and other social institutions, the survey shows that these rights are not believed to be accessible in practice. Only every 20th believes that medical help is absolutely accessible, every 4th thinks it is likely to be accessible, while 2/3 think it is either inaccessible or likely to be inaccessible. In the villages medical help seems easier to obtain and the attitude towards medical institutions is more loyal. However, the general picture is that access to medical care is a problem in the rural districts of the republic.

Besides the respondents are not ready to defend their rights – 56%. And every 9th is not sure yet. And there is no age dependency: young people, elderly people and people of active age reply equally. Men are a little more active (every 4th men is against every 5th woman).

Educational level also produces some slight effect: people with high education are more willing to defend their rights. (10% are ready to go on strike, 25% -to hold a mass-meeting, while only 3% of respondents with incomplete secondary education are willing to go on strike). District regions inhabitants are more active than urban inhabitants but this activity is a little higher than statistical accuracy. This is probably connected with general inactivity of disorganized people, community relations are broken and new relations connected with civil society only begin to appear. The respondents think about “one's daily bread”, and they are totally dependent on authorities, also a reason for their passive attitude.

All factors draw in the direction of refugees having a more vulnerable position in relation to legal rights.

Interestingly enough, the level of legal integration does not seem to differ in district towns or the villages. However, the following regularity appeared: in the populated areas, where DRC works, respondents two times more frequent (18% against 9%) assume, that the refugees are more active, than local residents.

4.2.2.6. Assistance to Refugees The same regularity seems to be reflected in the view of the authorities and their ability to assist with the refugee problem: In the districts where DRC works 38 % had a positive impression of the authorities ability to help; in other districts only 29 %. This means that a foreign investor and help agency will empower the authorities in the eye of the population. However, at the same time the population will also think more favorable of the international organizations in those districts: In districts where DRC does not work only 10 % of the population thought favorable of the international organizations in terms of assistance, while the same percentage in other districts was only 10%.

61 In the areas where DRC works 80% assume that help to refugees is necessary. However, it is noteworthy that 15 % feel this is not necessary and even 5 % adopt a hard-line position on this antagonistic to refugees. This should be read together with the fact that in the villages they assume that the refugees amount to a larger part of the population than they do in district towns. This may be interpreted as a sign that in villages the refugees are more visible than they are in the towns and hence draw more attention to themselves.

4.2.2.7. Institute Conclusions Concerning District Differences The situation in the districts represents an ambiguous picture. According to the survey results the most problematic districts in respect to living standards are Alagirskiy and Pravoberejniy districts where the respondents answered that they do not have enough income even for food (46% and 47% accordingly).

However, the statistic data given by the official authorities show the opposite: Pravoberejniy district is one of the most successful with low unemployment level and high incomes among its habitants. Probably the recent reduction of staff at the enterprises and consequences of the terrorist act in Beslan school have made an impact on the subjective view of the situation.

The worrying factor is that the local population’s attitude towards the assistance to refugees and IDPs is absolutely different in different districts. Thus in Kirovskiy district 6% are against assistance, in Pravoberejniy district this number is already 18%, and in Ardonskiy district it is even 22%. Attitude of population of Alaghirsky district appears to be in the same line. Every 9th person here thinks that the refugees should help themselves.

In no districts people rely on the local authorities. In respondents’ point of view the help should be rendered by the state. Here probably low financial opportunities of the local administrations are taken into consideration.

The values given by the respondents to the previous questions are also reflected in the answers concerning the number of migrants. It is in Ardonskiy district where the respondents think that “there are too many of these kudars” and only 2% say that their quantity is insignificant (in Pravoberejniy district this number is 11%).

As far as the type of assistance is concerned, Kirovskiy district should be mentioned where every third person knows about constructional assistance to refugees. It is probably explained by the fact that in such a small district big settlements established with help of international organizations are visible to the local society.

At the same time people in Ardonskiy district say “let them help us, and not these refugees”.

People in Kirovskiy district are the most informed concerning the construction programs (however “I don’t know which organization in particular”). Nevertheless, even here lack of information is evident (“If I knew I would go and ask myself”, “Here nobody knows how to apply to them”).

In other districts the situation is even worse. This state of affairs results in gossips (“They help only to their people”, “We know how they help”)

62 The fact that employment situation is the most favourable in Pravoberejniy district is confirmed by evaluation of possibility to find a well- paid job in the district. Only 56% here consider that it is impossible to find such a job while in Alagirskiy district 74% of respondents think so.

In all the districts people consider friendly connections (acquaintances) and money to be the most important factors in employment seeking. Only in Kirovskiy district professionalism is said to be an important factor – 23% (while in Ardonskiy district only 13%). Here should be stressed that every fifth person in Ardonskiy district could not find an answer and this opposes to the whole row.

The most negative attitude towards refugees (answer “they must return to the place they used to live”) is found in Alagirskiy and Ardonskiy district (10% and 11% accordingly). The most positive attitude is again found in Kirovskiy district. Only 1,5% share the statement that refugees must return to the place they used to live. This results in evaluation of the local population’s attitude towards refugees. 53% in Kirovskiy district think that the attitude is friendly (40% in Alagirskiy district), only 4% think that the attitude is aggressive while in other districts this number is more than 12% (in Ardonskiy district 10% have chosen “other variant” which implies even worse attitude “All of them should be thrown away”, “Let them get out of here”, “we are tired of them”, etc).

Two opposite opinions are found in discussion of criminal situation in the district. Only 14% of interviewed people in Kirovskiy district think that the situation has significantly changed or completely deteriorated, while in Pravoberejniy district this is opinion of 36%. This probably correlates with a fact that influx of refugees has coincided with “vodka boost” period when criminality has significantly increased.

Talking about culture differences attention should be paid to the perception of refugees in Ardonskiy district. The society here is very polarized. On the one hand 55% of the interviewed respondents think that the differences between the local people and South Ossetians are significant (in Alagirskiy and Pravoberejniy districts the opinion is approximately the same), on the other hand 6% think that there are no any differences (this result is not found in other districts). Here 8% of respondents couldn’t answer which testifies to the ongoing process of forming more distinct attitude in the public opinion.

Kirovskiy district shows more loyal attitude to this group of people. Only 31% answer that there are significant differences between the local people and refugees. The differences exist but in this case they are more connected with confessional differences (Thre is a larger muslim population in Kirovskiy district).

In all the districts many people have had difficulties in answering question about social activity. Nevertheless, people in three districts think that the local people are more socially active than refugees. Thus in Alagirskiy district 56% were saying about locals and only 8% about refugees. In Kirovskiy district the situation is different. Here 29% say about locals and 35% say that refugees are more active. It means that activity of refugees and their willingness to participate in public life gives them more favourable attitude from the people around them. At the same time the minority is ready to defend their rights and this situation is equal for all the districts.

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5. Recommendations 5.1. Balancing Program Effects on Integration 5.1.1. Manifest effects 5.1.1.1. Manifest Functions Employing the functional analysis of section 2.3.1.2., it is possible to relate the empirical findings to its parameters.

The description of the program has shown that the manifest effects are being obtained. A number of beneficiaries get a place to live. They can grow a vegetable garden. Their children are admitted into the local school and they are eligible for medical help. These effects are evident from the qualitative study. In order to obtain this they have to register with the authorities (propiska). And to enter into the DRC program moreover they have to have their documents in order, documenting their status as forced migrants.

Obtaining of propiska and proper documents are not an effect of the housing program. However, it is a precondition for entering into the program. This means that a number of migrants, beneficiaries as well as applicants rejected from the program, have their status confirmed and legalized with the authorities as an initial interaction with DRC. Even though an applicant does not in the end benefit from the program, he or she obtains a status that makes it possible for he/her for instance to enter into the open labor market, as opposed to working illegitimately. With the chosen parameters it is not possible to say for how many migrants the program has had this effect. It is a discovery that has emerged during the assessment, due to the continuous complaint in the office from people feeling maltreated because of they only see the downside to the efforts of obtaining papers, not the benefits. (See office cases 3.3.7.)

Another manifest effect was the creation of a distinction between the migrants and the local population. When a program has as the goal for a certain group of the population to benefit, distinction is inevitable. Failure to distinguish between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries is a violation of the conditions of the contract between the donor and the implementing institution. The Vladikavkaz office has procedures to ensure proper distinction. The gaining of a construction experience is a manifest function of the program, since it has a considerable element of self-help. This means that the learing of construction skills is part-and-parcel of the program.

The housing project has fixed standards that it seeks to apply to each case, according to the needs of the family. This means that there is very little room for individual taste, style and tradition. A certain equalizing is the effect of these standards. When going to a refugee compact settlement, the informed person will be able to pick the DRC houses by sight, because of the specific features. This equalizing is a necessary function of the package deal. The equal standards also support the administration when it has to explain why some beneficiaries receive more assistance and others less, thus adding accountability to the program.

5.1.1.2. Manifest malfunctions While a keen distinction between the eligible refugee and the non-eligible local shows the well functioning of the program, the enforcement thereof can create very emotional situations when locals do not see the logic or the justification for the distinction: they are in need as well. And

64 sometimes it is not obvious to the local that the forced migrant, having lived here more than 10 years should be treated more favourably than himself. Some even think he should be sent home.

In these cases the procedure of distinction turns into a feeling of unjustified discrimination on the part of the locals. It is not a relevant malfunction measured by the standards of the program itself. However, when we talk integration, we have to address this feeling and the reactions as a malfunction of program effects in the long run, since it can create animosity against the program and against the beneficiaries, thus hampering integration. The refugee day debates carried outbreaks of this viewpoint amongst the participating intellectuals, directing an antagonistic sentiment towards foreign NGOs. ( See reference to the debates in section 2.4.1.)

Also the fixed standards have their undesired effects. They deprive the beneficiaries of some of their individuality. In this respect the fixed standards becomes a malfunctioning. And since improvement of the houses, given the economic situation, will be possible for the migrants only some time in the far future, this equalizing feature will stand out as characteristic of the settlements for a number of years to come.

Another perceived malfunctioning is the discrimination in relation to other migrants not obtaining benefits from the program. In the selection procedure some beneficiaries are rejected. The information gathering demonstrated to the full that all received a reply and a reason for the rejection. However, information also attested to the fact that a number of the rejected migrants did not understand the reason and felt insulted by the rejection. (See above on office cases 3.3.7.) Some of the reasons for this frustration seem to stem from the fact that the migrants have not understood the selection criteria or they have not fully realized the situation of other migrants. When feeling insulted to be set aside by another family having applied at a later time, the insulted migrant for instance fail to understand that vulnerability overrides a “primo tempora, primo jure” rule. Also in North Ossetian society there seems to be an inclination towards a criterion of “desert” – that is the expectance on the part of the deserving applicant to be eligible to a portion of a larger portion than the less deserving person. (See 3.3.7. case a; and Helle Blomquist, Fieldtrip to Zmeyskaya)

5.1.2. Latent effects 5.1.2.1. Latent Functions A function of the housing program is for the migrants to obtain good health, the possibility to establish a family and to plan for the childrens’ upbringing and education, thus advancing literacy for youngsters. One could make a point out of maintaining that this is in fact a manifest function of the program. However, as is obvious from the overview of the housing program, there are no actual program elements directly including health, reproduction or children’s education. Hence, unlike the legal rights obtained through propiska, this is a factual potential asset that the housing program holds latently within its activities but does not develop explicitly vis-à-vis its beneficiaries. The same goes for the familiarity with agency functions though the confrontation with DRC administration. This is not a program objective. All the same, when dealing with DRC and complying with DRC procedures in order to become eligible under the program and later dealing with the construction, the beneficiary will develop this ability in order to interact with the office and the monitors. Their literacy is enhanced, in terms of their understanding of themselves as persons with certain rights and obligations.

Another latent function is the settling down of migrants as permanent inhabitants of villages and towns. This attests to a beginning of the process of social integration. However, as indicated from

65 the findings of the information gathering, the housing in itself does not guarantee obtaining high degrees of integration. The degree of integration will depend on other active elements of the program and factors outside the control of the program. Hence the questions of greater tolerance and the achieving of a greater richness in folklore with the integration of the migrants also remain open questions that should be confronted with the findings.

Moreover, a latent function is that, if competently trained, the beneficiaries will achieve a construction experience that they can bring to use on a future building construction site, thus easing their way into the labor market. The office respect of North Ossetian construction standards and implementing them during the construction ensures that this knowledge will be relevant employment market knowledge.

5.1.2.2. Latent Malfunctions In terms of the effects of the construction of houses the infrastructure issues are apparent, although they are hardly an intended effect of the program. In most cases the houses have been erected in the bare field. This places an enormous strain on the inhabitants either to compensate for this, collecting firewood for winter heating and carry water in barrels from afar, or simply to try living with no motorcars during parts of the winter. The consequences are severe difficulties for the children in getting to school and lack of ambulance transportation in case of illness. The location of most of the migrant settlements as compact settlements on the outskirts of the village or even in some distance from the village reinforces the infrastructure deficiencies in a most unlucky way. The migrant settlements appear to be isolated from the village. This creates a separation and exclusion that, combined with their lack of proper infrastructure could tend in the long run to stigmatize the inhabitants of these settlements, thus lead to the latent malfunctioning “barbarization” and hence an obstacle to integration.

A strain on schools and social institutions is also a potential latent malfunctioning of the establishment of a migrant settlement. Here the findings showed that in most cases the local communities were able to deal with the issue of capacity. We also found that in some cases professionals of local institutions such as schools and clubs were able to advance integration and common understanding. However, in some cases such efforts were absent, or institutions did not exist, or they lacked the extra resource to function properly.

An indirect and hence latent malfunctioning is the piling up of social issues in the course of the housing administration. Independently of DRC, the social problems exist. But the housing program makes them apparent in the face of DRC officials. The same goes for the dissatisfaction of the rejected refugee. When turning to the office he or she will not receive guidance as to further complaints procedures, as no such procedures exist. (See office cases 3.3.7.) This means the “the buck” stops with the shelter coordinator with a subsequent pressure added to this position.

Related to the appearance of social problems is the rise of “clientism”, the attitude that DRC is there to solve all the problems that the beneficiary might have and that assistance is depending on some kind of strange grace that is bestowed upon the beneficiary if he of she is persistent enough. The dark side to the advancement of literacy is the “speculation” in program criteria, sometimes bordering on fraud. Office cases show that the Vladikavkaz office deals with this problem in a competent way. (See 3.3.7.).

66 However, a more hidden aspect is the fact that in some cases extended families find it convenient living together, even though this is not their original family pattern. By resorting to a more traditional family pattern they can procure a larger house for themselves. Thus an actual effect of the program would be the distortion of family patterns.

On societal level on distinct latent malfunction stands out relating to economic integration: Together with the social pension the vegetable garden provides a minimum of sustenance for a large number of beneficiaries, thus motivating them not to enter into the labor market. On a macro level, given available investments in production, this deprives society of labor force and encourages a “datcha” culture comparable to that of Soviet Union, where the individual pretends to work (while spending time cultivating his own garden) and government pretends to pay. It also contributes to the separation of the labor market between local and refugees.

Social-psychological integration is unfavorably affected as well, as instead of receiving a social interaction in the work place refugees will be confided to their own production facilities and encounters with locals in the market when selling their goods. As is apparent from the empirical finding, the market situation is a source of animosity against the refugees.

5.2. Good News for DRC Balancing of the parameters of section 6.1. We can identify a number of effects on the plus side: The good news for DRC is that the manifest functions of the program seem to be having an impact on a relatively large number of families, when considering the limited resources of the program. The program package has set itself though in well-described routines and administrative practice. This practice undergoes a development according to the experience gathered from the year-by-year administration of new rounds of programs. The information gathering also demonstrated how this positively affected social integration, especially the legal integration, that is: the obtaining of propiska, bringing documents in order. This has brought positive consequences into school options for migrant children, the right to medical care and other institutions.

The economic integration was eased by the possibilities of the beneficiaries now to grow a vegetable garden and through this support the family both in kind and in money by selling in the market. To a large degree this affected the migrant women and advanced their possibilities of taking an active part as breadwinners of the family. Also the men were favourably affected in terms of economically integration, since their construction skills were improved.

Poor health is a big problem for some of the migrants, both suffering from the previous poor accommodation and the tougher climate of the North Caucasus. Respondents indicated a positive effect of the housing in this respect. This must represent hopes more than fact, but nevertheless attests to a positive reaction.

Neighbor interaction was also seen in the process of the house construction, as in the case of a single provider refugee family being helped by locals. All these elements indicated here will also advance social integration. This means, that even though social integration for the migrants is now at a low level on the scale indicated in our defining paragraph in section 1.2., the program’s manifest and latent functions on some of the indicators will aid the integration in the long run, given that the present practice and procedures on these points are continued and improvements/ revisions take place in a learning process as previously has been the case.

67 The Vladikavkaz administration is alert to social and health issues presented as well as broader transparency and accountability issues. The list of the beneficiaries of the year is being posted on the office bulletin board attests to this. Also a community meeting leading to the Krasnador village project goes in the same direction. Both demonstrate the ability of the office staff to learn and to address social and transparency/ accountability issues.

Moreover, if properly dealt with, office procedures and monitor’s practice will advance the beneficiaries’ literacy and civic awareness, in the sense that they think of themselves as individuals with rights and obligations, and not merely as clients depending on some distant grace of a benefactor.

5.3. Bad News for DRC 5.3.1. The “brick-and-Mortar” Logic The bad news for DRC is that a considerable number of the housing activities do not support social integration; and, in fact, if continued in the present way might even contribute to disintegration. Keeping in mind that the project title is: Physical and psycho-social rehabilitation in the North Caucasus, we need to assert that the program contributes directly to the physical rehabilitation only and not to the psycho-social one. The program and program administration is excellent in bringing out “brick and mortar”. Steps advancing the psycho-social aspects happen either as a latent function of the direct construction or as a result of an extraordinary, singular initiatives from the program coordinator.

Naturally there is no way of saying what will happen in terms of integration if the present activities are continued as previously. Only hypothetical assumptions can be made. However, when adding up facts on the social integration issues, there are a number of structural factors that will run counter to social integration. This development is not happening due incompetence of the Vladikavkaz office or ill will to address integration issues. As is apparent from the analysis above it is a result of the presence of a number of factors and contexts more or less hidden to the administration and due to the practical focus of its work on other aspects.

5.3.2. Social-Psychological Work The description of the program shows that the main and overall priority for the program is to have the program cycle functioning. The cases presented from daily office work show that the social and psychological problems of both the refugees and the locals find their way to the office. And clients’ misery places a huge strain on office staff. They are aware of and responsive to social problems and they try to cope. But they lack social work and administrative methods in this direction as well as practice and awareness and capacity on the part of management to deal with the day-to-day social problems of clients while swinging around the physical part of the program. If not taken properly care of, this may create a feeling of being “burned out” among the staff. Even if professional competence and administrative practices are implemented, every once in a while the staff will need to have supervision in order to “unload” some of the human misery that they have to deal with.

Related to the social work are the legal problems that some refugees may encounter when obtaining citizenship. As was revealed during the information gathering it is not difficult to arrange for legal help to supplement the resources of the DRC office. However, in the busy day this matter will naturally have a last priority in the face of the housing program cycle. (See office cases 3.3.7. and 2.3.2.2.)

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5.3.3. No Preparation for technical Infrastructure As for the infrastructure issues the dominating picture was that DRC in fact supports and participates in the construction of large neighbourhoods not already having been prepared for construction. As I did not have access to government stakeholders, I can only assume that the explanation is that DRC follows the instructions of the Federal Migration Service and North Ossetian government without seeking influencing the situation. Along with the lack of properly dealing with the social and psychological factors, this is the most serious flaw of the present program. Lack of infrastructure is counterproductive to the otherwise legally obtained access to health- to social and educational institutions.

5.3.4. The Compact Settlements A dominant impression from the refugee communities is that 16 out of 22 are compact settlements. Moreover, the compact settlements always will be on the outskirts of the village at best, and in some situations even in some distance. The nearest access road will sometimes is from the federal road and not from the village. The isolated situation of the compact settlements reinforces the impression rendered by the lack of infrastructure. These factors set off refugee settlements from the main village. If nothing is done and considering the cultural differences between refugees and locals, in the long run this provides the preconditions for stigmatizing the refugee communities, opening up to locals talking about “kudarze” telling them on busses to “go home” and talking about the refugee neighbourhoods as “Santa Barbara”.

An attempt during summer 2005 to mend the road situation in Zmeyskaya and the water supply in Mairamadag came to nothing. The failure might have been due to an extraordinary situation in the UNDP Moscow office. Thus there might be success when applying next year. However, three factors should be underlined in this particular context: The writing of proposals drained the resources of the Vladikavkaz office shelter program as well as of the SER program for several weeks while working on the cases. And the proposals only touched two out of 16 compact settlements. Moreover, the Vladikavkaz office indirectly received information about the failure, and moreover failed to have time to deal with it when this information came back as frustrated criticism related through another channel.

5.3.5. Lack of feed back and step –by-step accountability The UNDP proposal cases showed that DRC North Caucasus management does not have a functioning and good standard for involvement and feed back to the units doing the work on a particular case. This is yet another structural factor indicating problems for a social integration.

In view of the frustration tied to the failure, the Vladikavkaz office halted interaction with the two villages and barred the impact assessment project from also having full interaction with the villages. The reason for this was the worry that direct contact with the villages and the refugees would bring ill feeling to the fore. The good and sound intention of the coordinator Oksane Korevina was to take an information meeting in the villages explaining the situation. However, in the midst of the pressing program cycle this was not realized. Thus from September 2005 and until the end of November 2005 when the consultant left the scene, the office did not follow up on this. This in itself attests to failure of living up to standards of accountability in the face of the beneficiaries of the housing program and the local communities that host them.

69 Another documented failure of accountability are the cases of “The insulted rejected refugee”; the refugee wanting his papers back, the local person feeling discriminated because everything is done for the refugees and nothing for them and the lack of knowledge in whole of DRC practices as shown in the office cases 3.3.7. Again this attests to lack of information, lack of resources or professional capability to address these cases openly though showing DRC’s face in the community. While working on the impact assessment the consultant repeatedly heard the same reasons from DRC for advancing informaiton to to local communities: fear of attracting the anger of the authorities not yet having accredited DRC to North Ossetia, fear of being run over in the office by people standing in line to get help or simply lack of time to do the job. Right as these arguments may seem at the time, they also attest to DRC North Caucaus management not being prepared to engage in this particular field of the task. It raises a number of questions, such as: How can this task be approached under the specific North Caucasus conditions? And if this is not possible: Is it advisable to set up a program if authorities can prosecute you for carrying out normal functions? How to run program activities if you cannot allocate resources to account for them to the clients? How to push for a program goal if you do not keep up direct information of the staff involved? Pointed as these questions may seem, they still provide stepping stones for recommendations as how to enhance program accountability.

Keeping in mind the results from the empirical findings we are forced to conclude that the DRC housing program in a number of aspects positively contributes to integration. But it contributes to disintegrations as well. Recommendations below contain a wide spectrum of suggestions that could be employed in order to provide a more forceful contribution to the social integration.

5.4. Dealing with bad news: Recommendations And Action Plan 5.4.1. Recommendations The gist of the subsequent recommendation is that DRC should adopt a more holistic view on the North Ossetian housing program. Thus recommendations are listed in the following 10 points.

1. Stakeholder Analysis And Contact Initially it is strongly recommended to establish a clear picture of local stakeholders relevant to an areabased housing program, in order to ascertain stakeholders’ varied interests and policies on the subject. When approaching local stakeholders DRC should keep in mind that parts of the North Ossetia-Alania elite hold some skepticism as to the intentions and agendas of foreign NGOs. However, one consireation in this respect could be a DRC Vladikavkaz office as an integral part of the international agencies working in Vladikavkaz.35 This will strengthen DRC North Caucasus position since it may advert the alleged accusations that DRC is an agency exclusively advancing Ingush or Chechen interests from the Nazran office.

2.. No bare field; No Compact Settlements; No Small Villages When negotiating for location of new refugee housing, DRC should refuse a location that has not been prepared for construction of houses.

35 On Thursday the 24 of November 2005 the Russian Duma passed a bill on NGOs. If the bill enters into force as a new law, it will restrict the activities of foreign NGOs. It is beyond the scope of this report to discuss what impact this might have for DRC’s activities.

70 Moreover, in the future DRC should push hard for solutions avoiding the compact settlements. In this connection DRC should oppose large compact settlements. And smaller compact settlements should not be accepted without social measures compensating for the problems they cause.

DRC should also advise government not to include small, rural villages into location of refugee houses, since the social control in these villages, in combination with the resentment of the favourable treatment of refugees will spur hostility towards the refugees.

Likewise, DRC can advance the advice to North Ossetian authorities that existing urban structures will be favourably for the location of refugees. If combined with a boost to the economy, provide the area with a willing work force, it will also dampen the isolation of the “datcha” culture and advance integration of the refugees.

2. Respect of Social-psychological Work; Town Plan Issues DRC should supplement the resources and professional competences of the Vladikavkaz office shelter department. A new professional competence should be added to supplement the present construction expertise with knowledge of social-psychological work and town planning.

Also the bringing out of “brick and mortar” should be subordinated to a professional competence of a more holistic view including the complete set of issues involved. Addressing the social and town plan issues is not possible through the mere hiring of an additional local staff member. Hence under the headline of social-psychological work it is advisable to include some additional program units. Collaboration with local NGOs and existing local government institutions is a must; see also 4.

3. Governance Step-by-step accountability should be introduced through open, public meetings/hearing addressing the list of beneficiaries.

For individual cases an explicit complaints mechanism could ease pressure on the shelter coordinator level.

4. Partner Districts; Government Collaboration Since the awareness of an areabased approach depends on a close collaboration of responsible and competent key figures, it could be adventageous to select a pilot district for the implementation of this approach in practice.

Kirovsky district seems to be successful in creating integration. Therefore this district appears to be able to function as a template or test pilot for new program elements. A close collaboraiton with district administraiotn will also fall in line with a large popular desire for the Russian state to engage into refugee assistance. It would be adventageous to include a collaboraiotn with local profesisonals in existing institutions. . 5. Mending Technical Infrastructure It should be considered how to mend the defunct infrastructures of the present compact settlements. It would be preferable to include both local and refugee settlements in new projects in order to avoid tension.

6. Façade Style

71 It should be considered how to advance a façade style more in line with the traditional North Ossetian one, and in this include the present settlements. This is all the more important since refugees do not have economy to improve their own houses.

7. Collective Centers DRC should openly, together with other stakeholders address the problem of the collective centers in Prigorodny and Vladikavkaz, recognizing that a housing in the rural districts might not be feasible for all the inhabitants of these centers. In this connection pressing co-existence issues have to be considered and addressed possibly in the form of social projects embedded in existing institutions (for instance schools). The restoration of apartment buildings could include social and commercial facilities. A close collaboration with UNHCR on the emptying of the collective centers will necessitate DRC to reflect over its beneficiary criteria and produce a new standard.

8. Income generating activities As lack of employment is a major obstacle to integration and the sustainability of the refugee settlements, it is advisable to consider how to add income-generating activities to the shelter program. Income generating activities in refugee settlements should respect environmental standards. If run in a businesslike manner the mere working together in a workplace should not be expected in themselves to contribute in an significant way to peaceful co-existence.

The specific work with the shelter program has enabled the consultant to include some recommendations of a more general nature concerning impact assessment and capacity building:

9. Capacity building and impact assessment It will be a great advantage if capacity building and impact assessment can take place with a clear and explicit social science profile (specialist) according to mainstream methods, including qualitative and/or quantitative methods according to the specific situation and subject. Explicitness should be expressed in contract(s) ruling the activity. This renders the work elss vulnarable to accusations of political activities and undue influencing of NGOs.

10. Selection of Local NGOs When selecting local NGOs for collaboration in a specific project such as the present, DRC should consider to advance a more open process to include a greater number available interested parties. This process could draw on the capacity and experience of GRINGO. This would create a better standard of transparancy and possibly a forum of discussion throughout the project.

5.4.2. Pan of Action Getting from recommendations to results could take the follwong course of action: 1. Responsible DRC program units should decide if DRC North Caucasus should procede with one or several of the recommendations above and the sequence and timeframe for this.

2. In this context a first step could be taking up, on a strict, investigational/specialist basis, contact to government and other stakeholders in order to get a full stakeholder analysis.

3. Simultaneously a discussion should be facilitated with the Valdikavkaz shelter department on the development in the recommended direction, involving shelter department as well as SER (livelihood). Within this discussion should be included a sharing of the results of this report with the collaborating partners of the MOU. Missing information should be added.

72 This facilitation should be conducted by a person qualified to set up a more holistic shelter administration. . 4. If the discussions result in a decision to move on, the next step could be a DRC management decision to do a consolidated needs assessment and writing proposal to advance the necessary activities.

5. The last step would be to implement the new activities, subsequently monitoring if they sufficiently address the failures identified.

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