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On 7 August 2008, long-standing tensions in the Caucasus region came to a head when President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia ordered troops into the de facto independent region of South Ossetia with a view to reestablishing Georgian sovereignty. This intervention, which included the shelling and occupation of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, was the culmination of a number of more minor military exchanges over the proceeding months. South Ossetia’s sponsor, the Russian Federation, responded swiftly to the Georgian action, with a large-scale military intervention into the state of Georgia. This use of force ultimately went beyond the boundaries of the South Ossetia region, both into the comparable breakaway region of Abkhazia and further into ‘Georgia proper’.
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The approach of both domestic Georgian authorities and international organisations to solving the displacement crisis created by the 2008 Russia–Georgia conflict charted a new path.1 It was radically different than approaches taken in the early 1990s when Georgia was faced with mass displacements following the secessionist conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In particular, the expectation that a prompt return to homes of origin would be the preferred durable solution to the displacement was quickly abandoned for a sizeable number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) forced to leave their homes during the 2008 conflict. In its place, the two other theoretically accepted – but much less widely used – durable solutions to displacement (local integration and resettlement) have been embraced with unprecedented speed and vigour, with both funding and logistical support in place to implement such plans.
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At the turn of this century, the editors of a special issue of the journal International Organization suggested that a greater ‘move to law’ was occurring and that a trend towards the ‘legalization of world politics’ was taking place.1 While this view was contemporaneously criticised as presenting a simplistic conception of law, one which failed to adequately account for the dynamic interaction between norms and policies and between legal and political actors,2 the basic insight that international law and politics intersected seemed undeniable. The 2003 Iraq invasion shook this view. Realists (and ‘neo-cons’ who thought of themselves as realists) were quick to point out that hard power was back – if indeed it had ever gone – and that any ‘liberal moment’ that had emerged in the 1990s (evidenced by robust collective action through the Security Council and the creation of the International Criminal Court, among other things) had ended.3 Many legal scholars perceived a ‘crisis in confidence’ for international law. Some responded to this ‘crisis’ by suggesting that international law reorient itself to new threats and new realities, chipping away for example at the 1945 United Nations (UN) Charter framework that restricted the use of force to narrow exceptions.4