Abkhazian passport

Abkhazian passport
The front cover of a contemporary Abkhazian passport.
Issued by	Abkhazia
Type of document	Passport
Purpose	Identification
Eligibility requirements	Abkhazian citizenship

The Abkhazian passport (Abkhaz: Атәылауаҩшәкәы; Russian: Абха́зский па́спорт) is issued to citizens of the Republic of Abkhazia for the purpose of international travel and for the purpose of legal identification within Abkhazia. As Abkhazia is only recognised by Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Nauru, for all other destinations Abkhazian citizens must use another passport (most of them use Russian passports) for international travel.

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 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 have them issued. 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.