If your house was on fire what would you rescue as you ran from the smoke and flames? A family photograph? Or a keepsake, a special piece of jewellery perhaps? What about your contraceptive pills? Of course not the pills, it will be possible to get more from the health centre. But what if the cause of the fire is a bomb and the health centre was also hit? For the women of Georgia who are pregnant or use the contraceptive pill as their method of contraception, this in the situation they face.
I’ve come to Georgia as part of a fact finding delegation from the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development to assess the reproductive health needs of those who have been displaced by the recent fighting between Russian, Georgian and South Ossetian forces. The rest of the delegation is made up of MPs and MEPs but I am representing Marie Stopes International (MSI) which is the only NGO to have been invited.
I've been invited because I work on the RAISE Initiative which MSI coordinates along with Columbia University. RAISE is a multi agency, multi country programme which brings together 10 leading service delivery and advocacy organisations to scale up comprehensive reproductive health services in crisis settings. RAISE, which stands for Reproductive Health Access, Information and Services in Emergencies, helps refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs) and returnees in crisis areas such as Colombia, Northern Uganda, and Darfur in Sudan.
Here in Georgia, an estimated 128,000 people were displaced within Georgia and South Ossetia and more than 30,000 fled to North Ossetia in the Russian Federation. Approximately half of those have now returned home, but for many this remains impossible.
Many women fled with their husbands and children to Tbilisi where they have been living in “collective centres” - schools and other public buildings that have been converted into temporary shelters.
Today, we visited one of the collective centres, a school in Tbilisi where 100 families are now living. Many of the people living in the school are from the villages to the north of Gori city. Conditions are basic, with only one toilet and one washbasin on each of the four floors. Wherever possible, families stay together, but often there are two of more families in each room. Late at night, husband and wife talk about when they may be able to go home and what they might find when they get there. They talk about plans for the future and they come together to comfort each other. But she has not taken her contraceptive pill since the day she left her burning home over a month ago.
Reproductive health services are recognised in humanitarian guidelines as an essential part of emergency response. Priority activities are primarily preventive – preventing gender based violence, HIV transmission and preventing unwanted pregnancy. Although abortion is legal on demand up to 13 weeks in Georgia, health services have been disrupted and prevention (contraception) is the better option.
We also went to Gori where we saw the bombed houses and schools from which many had fled. Tomorrow, we are going to see the tent city there where over 2,000 people are now living.
It's been an exhausting day.