UN headquarters hosts photo exhibition featuring stories of Georgian IDPs

A photo exhibition showing the lives of Georgian internally displaced persons (IDPs) will soon be displayed at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York.

The exhibition entitled A Story of Internal Displacement Captured on Camera will focus on one of the most challenging humanitarian problems of the modern world — displacement.

The photo collection of various international photographers will tell the story of IDPs and refugees from Georgia's breakaway regions Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) who were forced to leave their homes following several waves of displacement since the early 1990s.

The exhibition will be organised by the Georgian Permanent Mission to the UN.

"[The event] aims to contribute to an increased awareness on this very important matter,” the organisers said.

"Leaving politics aside, this exhibition focuses exclusively on the humanitarian dimension of the problem as the fundamental rights of the displaced are at stake.”

The exhibition document the plight of the IDPs in Georgia dating back to the early 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of Georgian citizens of various ethnicities were forced to leave their homes as a painful consequence of the conflict.

The situation of IDPs on the ground has further deteriorated after the war in 2008 which resulted in a new wave of forcible displacement of tens of thousands of people, particularly from Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) region, dividing families and causing further pain and hardship.

This photo taken by Agenda.ge photographer Nino Alavidze features two internally displaced women getting ready to bake bread in Tserovani IDP settlement near Tbilisi. The woman on the left was forced to leave Tskhinvali region following the war between Russia and Georgia in 2008. The woman on the right was displaced twice in her life: She had to leave her Sokhumi house following the Abkhazia conflict in the 90's; after this she settled in Tskinvali region, which she had to leave in 2008. She lost her son and husband to the conflicts. 

The opening of the exhibition will coincide with Georgia's Independence Day, May 26, and will be open to visitors to June 2, 2015.