Abkhazian Passport - History

History

Before the introduction of Abkhazian passports, Abkhazia still used Soviet Passports. These arrived in 1991 in Adjara, where they were not needed since Adjara and the rest of Georgia were introducing separate Georgian passports. They were then given by the Adjar leader Aslan Abashidze to the Abkhazian authorities, although it is not known how or when. People who could not obtain a Soviet passport, for example because they had not yet turned 16 when the Soviet Union disbanded or many of the inhabitants of the Gali District received a 'form no. 9', meant to certify a loss of passport.

The Soviet passports were set to expire in 2008, and so a new passport was needed. The issue of an Abkhazian passport was first discussed towards the end of the nineties. In May of 2000, Justice Minister Batal Tabagua announced that an order for empty passport forms placed with the Perm Goznak Manufacture had been cancelled by Russia's Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In 2003 finally passports were ordered from a private Turkish printing company, but the first shipment of 25,000 passports was intercepted and confiscated by Georgian authorities. The passports had been meant to be distributed before the 2004 Presidential election, but when the second batch arrived it became clear that the passports contained errors and so President Vladislav Ardzinba decided not to distribute them. After Sergei Bagapsh was elected to the presidency he decided not to waste the invested money and to introduce the passports in January 2006 despite the errors. The first passport was issued to former President Ardzinba, and the second passport posthumously to activist and academic Tamara Shakryl, who had been the only victim during the 2004 post-election crisis. President Bagapsh himself was the first person to regularly apply for an Abkhazian passport.

The Abkhazian government said in 2007 that once the distribution of passports was completed, it would be the only legal form of identification within Abkhazia. It was announced that from the beginning of 2008, citizens could no longer receive a Russian pension without an Abkhazian passport. Abkhazian passports will be the only possible form of legitimation for voters in the December 2009 Presidential election.

On 20 October 2009 it was announced that a new passport will be introduced with additional security features, so as to satisfy all international criteria. The new passports will be printed by the Russian state enterprise Goznak. The current design of passports is insufficiently secure for them to be used to cross the border with Russia. Abkhazia said it would start issuing passports to its citizens by the end of June 2010.