Byte-ing the bullet: OSCE offers computers in exchange for weapons in Georgia

TBILISI, 26 February 2002 - The OSCE Mission to Georgia today handed over three computers to a secondary school where parents had organized the voluntary hand-over of small arms, in response to a weapons collection campaign conducted by the European security watchdog and the Joint Peace Keeping Forces (JPKF) in the Georgian-Ossetian zone of conflict.

The Director of Secondary School No 2 in Tskhinvali, Mrs. Alla Alekseevna Jioeva, (centre in the photograph) received the computers which constituted compensation for small arms, voluntarily handed over by parents of students of this school to the JPKF. The Force's commander, Major General Vasilij Vasilevich Prizemlin, also took part in the hand-over of the computers.

"While this gift is a handshake to those parents who have handed over the arms, it will provide students with modern means to study", said Ivar Vikki, Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission at a ceremony on the JPKF compound. "The Mission has responded to a direct request from parents of students, who wished to have educational equipment in exchange for arms", he added, stressing that there was no direct cash compensation.

In connection with this arms collection programme, several international donors, the European Union, Norway and the United Kingdom, have provided compensation projects, such as upgrading a joint Georgian and South Ossetian law enforcement center, manned with police officers from both sides, as well as a clean-up of an irrigation tunnel running through Georgian and Ossetian villages. The projects should be seen as a collective compensation to arms handed over.

The OSCE Mission will continue to seek support among international donors for small, targeted and concrete responses, thus compensating for arms handed over.

Up to today, 1,270 units of arms and 205 kilograms of pure explosives have been handed over since the programme began in 2000. The arms are mainly collected by a tripartite observer group of the JPKFs, consisting of Russian, Georgian, and Ossetian peacekeepers. Following collection, the weapons are destroyed by the JPKF.