The Parliament of breakaway Abkhazia adopted a law on citizenship on October 24 with its third and final reading, the Abkhaz news agency Apsnipress reported.
 
According to the draft law, the citizens of the Republic of Abkhazia are: 

• ethnic Abkhaz, regardless of the place of their residence or their citizenship;
• persons, who have been permanently living in Abkhazia for no less than five years following the adoption of the Act on Independence of the Republic of Abkhazia on October 12, 1999;

Citizens of Abkhazia can simultaneously be citizens of the Russian Federation alone, according to the draft. 

These provisions serve to discriminate against almost all ethnic Georgians and persons of other nationalities that left Abkhazia during or after the end of the conflict in 1993.