Fast Action During the Russia-Georgia Conflict

Our real-time reporting on the Russia-Georgia conflict in August made Human Rights Watch the go-to source for reliable information during the crisis and helped to save lives. Immediately after the conflict broke, we deployed a team of six researchers, including two who for days were the only independent observers in South Ossetia. Our reporting had an immediate impact. When we exposed that Russian-allied Ossetian militia were looting and burning ethnic Georgian villages as Russian troops stood idly by, at least some Russian troops began to stop the mayhem. When both Russia and Georgia threatened to heighten tensions by accusing each other of exaggerated atrocities, our reporting established the uncontested reality and brought the numbers down to earth. Our revelations that both sides used cluster bombs proved so embarrassing that Russia refused even to own up to the use (despite our video evidence) and, at our recommendation, Georgia launched a major public campaign to educate civilians about unexploded ordnance to prevent further deaths. Our reporting helped convince the United Nations to send a fact-finding mission to the region and led the European Union to strengthen its policing mission in Georgia. But tensions have not eased sufficiently. Looting and burning continues in some ethnic Georgian villages of South Ossetia, with Russian troops sometimes still doing nothing to stop it, and most of the people displaced from those villages still have not been allowed to return home. We are now building pressure on the United Nations and the European Union to secure these villages and protect ethnic Georgians from continuing attacks by Ossetian militia.