National Integration And Problems Of Minorities

Author : Niklas Nilsson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789185937493
Total Pages : 64 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (374 download)

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Download or read book State Approaches to National Integration in Georgia written by Niklas Nilsson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Georgian government's handling of minority affairs is important in several respects. First, it is an important area in Georgia's integration with European institutions; indeed, Georgia is a signatory to numerous treaties that require it to reform its legislation concerning national minority issues. More broadly, however, it is an important element in the building of a democratic and peaceful state. Given Georgia's problems with externally inspired secessionism, the government's relationship with minorities within territory controlled by Tbilisi can play an important role not only in framing Georgia's future, but also in determining its attractiveness to those minorities whose leaderships have chosen to part ways with Tbilisi. Since the Rose Revolution of 2004, Georgia has been changing rapidly; and some of this change - even while aiming at the fuller integration of minority populations with the rest of Georgia in economic, social, and political terms - has caused frictions with minority populations, adding further importance to the government's handling of the question of national minorities. This report aspires to provide two perspectives on Georgia's process of national integration, with a focus on minority issues. The first contribution, "State Building Dilemmas: The Process of National Integration in Post-Revolutionary Georgia" seeks to identify contemporary problems and tradeoffs associated with Georgia's state-building process, with implications for the state's handling of national integration and minority issues. It is written by two of the Joint Center's researchers with particular expertise on Georgian affairs, Niklas Nilsson and Johanna Popjanevski. They conclude that while the Georgian leadership is increasingly adopting a citizenship based approach to minority integration, certain priorities in the state-building process risk impeding the introduction of sufficient safeguards for minority rights. Incoherencies and communication deficits in Georgia's approaches to minority integration add to tensions between majority and minorities, as well as between center and region. It is therefore essential that Georgia develops ways to accommodate its visions of national unity with the implementation of international minority rights, and that this process takes place in constant dialogue with minority populations. The second contribution, "The Georgian State and Minority Integration: Progress Made and Progress Still to Come," is a needs assessment study based on the work of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS) on the topic of ethnic minority integration in the Georgian state over a four-year period (2003-07). It is written by Ekaterine Metreveli and Temuri Yakobashvili. The paper concludes that while the Georgian government has been making demonstrated efforts at promoting the national integration of ethnic minorities, the activities have been limited in their scope and application to only sporadic interventions with the overall process still lacking the necessary mechanisms for achieving successful results. The study shows that a more proactive approach from the side of Tbilisi from whence governmental policies will not only be viewed through an ethnic lens will contribute more directly to the desired end.