Tsiza Gumba: UN could issue interim documents to citizens of Abkhazia

"Due to the fact that the international community has not recognized our state for already 10 post-war years and Russia, along with other CIS countries, has introduced sanctions against Abkhazia, people in the republic have no fundamental rights secured by the Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to leave Abkhazia and to return to it," reads a letter addressed by Lawyer Tsiza Gumba, a deputy of the Abkhazian Parliament of the previous convocation, to Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Georgia Heidi Tagliavini. Ms. Gumba suggested "arranging the issue of UN interim passports to the citizens of Abkhazia until the conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia was settled." The author of the letter holds that under such conditions, many people in the republic have to become citizens of Russia in order to survive. "With the unspoken consent and non-interference of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG), Russian authorities have introduced a facilitated procedure for receiving Russian citizenship on the territory of Abkhazia. The majority of the Abkhazian citizens will become citizens of Russia very soon in such a way," Tsiza Gumba writes. The author of the letter believes that the United Nations could promote the solution of the passport problem in the Republic of Abkhazia by giving the interim documents to the citizens of Abkhazia, just the same way it did it in Kosovo or Eastern Timor.