Nauru Withdraws Recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia

SUKHUM / AQW'A — Sixteen and a half years after becoming the fourth UN member state to recognise Abkhazia, the Pacific island republic has ended diplomatic relations. Sukhum's Foreign Ministry calls the decision forced. Nauru itself has said nothing, which is how these reversals have tended to happen.

Nauru has terminated diplomatic relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The decision took effect on 21 July and was made public on 29 July by the Georgian Foreign Ministry, which said it welcomed the step and was ready to open relations with Nauru and to develop cooperation on shared interests. Tbilisi framed the withdrawal as evidence that international law remains the basis of orderly relations between states.

Nauru has said nothing. Its Foreign Ministry has issued no statement, and the government's official Facebook page, updated regularly, carries no reference to the decision. Confirmation that the decision is real came instead from Sukhum, where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Abkhazia issued the statement published in full in translation below.

Georgian Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili described the outcome as a significant success for the policy of non-recognition. She said Nauru's original decision had breached international legal norms, that Georgian diplomats had worked continuously with partners to have it reversed, and that recent efforts in particular had produced the result announced this week. She added that Tbilisi would keep working towards the revocation of the remaining recognitions.

The Abkhazian Foreign Ministry said it noted the decision with regret and regarded it as forced, taken under systematic external pressure. It described a campaign of political blackmail, diplomatic pressure and financial and economic penalties directed at Nauru as bilateral projects moved from paper into practice. It cited public remarks by former Nauruan President Baron Waqa, made during his visit to Abkhazia, in which he spoke of the pressure applied to his country after recognition and of attempts to reverse the decision through direct inducement.

How Nauru came to recognise Abkhazia

Nauru is a phosphate island of roughly twelve thousand people in the South Pacific, a UN member since 1999. On 15 December 2009 its Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Kieren Keke, signed a joint statement in Sukhum with Abkhazian Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba establishing diplomatic relations. Nauru became the fourth UN member state to recognise Abkhazia, after Russia, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Recognition of South Ossetia followed the next day.

The Russian daily Kommersant reported at the time that Nauru had asked Moscow for fifty million dollars for projects on the island. Asked that month whether the sum amounted to payment for recognition, Shamba rejected the suggestion that diplomatic relations are established on that basis, while allowing that international practice contains a considerable element of bargaining. The figure has attached itself to Nauru's decision ever since, and Georgian and Western commentary has rarely discussed the recognition without it.

The Pacific precedent, and what actually happened

The Pacific recognitions of 2009 to 2011 owed a good deal to the efforts of Juris Gulbis, the Latvian businessman who served as Abkhazia's ambassador-at-large and worked the island capitals on Sukhum's behalf. Vanuatu recognised Abkhazia in May 2011. Tuvalu recognised both republics in September of the same year.

Both are conventionally reported as having withdrawn that recognition, and the shorthand has passed into almost every account of Abkhazia's diplomatic position, including the reporting of this week's news from Nauru. The shorthand is inexact. Neither state issued a formal act of withdrawal. What happened in each case was that contact with Sukhum ceased and relations were opened with Tbilisi on terms endorsing Georgia's territorial integrity. Vanuatu's position unravelled through 2013 amid changes of government in Port Vila. Tuvalu established diplomatic and consular relations with Georgia in Tbilisi on 31 March 2014, affirming Georgian territorial integrity and describing Abkhazia and South Ossetia as Georgian regions. Viacheslav Chirikba, Abkhazia's Foreign Minister from 2011 to 2016, records that when Tuvalu was asked directly about revoking its recognition, the answer was that no formal announcement would be made.

The distinction matters for reasons beyond pedantry. A recognition that is formally revoked is a decision a government has to defend at home and abroad. A recognition that is simply allowed to lapse costs nothing to make and commits no one to anything. It also leaves the record ambiguous enough that both Tbilisi and Sukhum can describe the same silence as vindication.

Nauru's case is not identical. There does appear to have been a decision, communicated and dated, and Abkhazia's Foreign Ministry has responded to it as such rather than disputing that it occurred. But Nauru has still not announced it. The public record consists of a Georgian statement and an Abkhazian one, with the state whose decision it was absent from both.

Twelve more years

Nauru held out longer than its neighbours. Baron Waqa travelled to Sukhum on 22 and 23 November 2017, becoming the first non-Russian head of state to visit Abkhazia, and met President Raul Khajimba. An Abkhazian delegation attended Nauru's fiftieth independence anniversary in early 2018. Gulbis had said publicly in 2012 that Washington was withholding aid from the three island states over the recognition question; the State Department denied withholding aid while confirming that it had been clear about its position. In May 2017 the United States enacted a spending provision denying assistance to any government that recognises Abkhazia or South Ossetia or establishes diplomatic relations with them independently of Georgia. For a state dependent on external assistance and on multilateral institutions funded largely by Washington, the arithmetic of holding the line grew harder each year.

What remains

Four UN member states now recognise Abkhazia: Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Syria. Syria's position has been open to question since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, and the transitional authorities in Damascus have given no clear indication either way. Lithuania has publicly urged Damascus to withdraw the recognition extended in 2018. Abkhazia is also recognised by South Ossetia and Transnistria.

The Abkhazian Foreign Ministry's statement closed on the point that small states with limited resources are the most exposed to political, diplomatic and economic instruments of influence, and that the practice sits badly with the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference set out in the UN Charter. It said Abkhazia remains committed to strengthening its international standing and to cooperation with states that share those principles.

Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Abkhazia on the decision of the Republic of Nauru to terminate diplomatic relations with the Republic of Abkhazia

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Abkhazia notes with regret the forced character of the decision of the Republic of Nauru to terminate diplomatic relations with the Republic of Abkhazia, taken under conditions of unprecedented and systematic external pressure.

From the day the Republic of Nauru recognised the Republic of Abkhazia on 15 December 2009 and diplomatic relations were established between the two states, a constructive political dialogue was formed and a foundation was laid for the development of treaty and legal cooperation. Mutual visits at the highest and senior levels became an important milestone in the development of bilateral relations, including the visit of the leadership of the Republic of Nauru to the Republic of Abkhazia and the return visit of an Abkhazian delegation headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Abkhazia. Following these contacts, the sides continued the consistent development of bilateral interaction, including the implementation of joint projects and initiatives intended to give the cooperation practical content.

The development of relations between the Republic of Abkhazia and the Republic of Nauru met with invariable opposition from Georgia and its Western partners. As joint initiatives moved into the practical sphere, a campaign of aggressive external pressure was unleashed against the Republic of Nauru. The full arsenal of impermissible methods of strangulation and coercion was brought to bear, from unceremonious political blackmail and crude diplomatic pressure to open financial and economic reprisals and punitive sanctions measures, all directed at overturning the sovereign choice of the Republic of Nauru.

A clear illustration of the methods of pressure applied is provided by the public statements of the former President of the Republic of Nauru, Baron Waqa, made during his visit to the Republic of Abkhazia. He stated openly that unprecedented pressure had been exerted on his country following the recognition of the independence of the Republic of Abkhazia, and that attempts had been made to force the Republic of Nauru to renounce its earlier sovereign decision through direct bribery and financial influence.

It should be noted that in the course of official contacts the previous leadership of the Republic of Nauru repeatedly confirmed its commitment to the principles of the sovereign equality of states and to the inadmissibility of interference in the independent formation of a foreign policy course.

The decision of the Republic of Nauru to terminate diplomatic relations is the direct result of prolonged and systematic political and diplomatic pressure aimed at restricting the international ties of the Republic of Abkhazia and at overturning an independent decision taken by a sovereign state.

For many years, states maintaining diplomatic relations with the Republic of Abkhazia have faced external influence intended to make them abandon a foreign policy course of their own determination. Small states, possessing limited resources with which to counter large-scale political, diplomatic and economic instruments of influence, are particularly vulnerable to pressure of this kind.

Such practice contradicts the fundamental principles of the UN Charter, including the principles of the sovereign equality of states and non-interference in their internal affairs. It testifies to disturbing tendencies in the contemporary system of international relations, in which political pressure is increasingly used in place of dialogue between equals, and in which geopolitical expediency begins to prevail over the principles of international law.

Historical experience shows that a policy of pressure, threats, economic coercion and attempted artificial isolation is not capable of altering existing political realities.

The Republic of Abkhazia remains committed to a course of strengthening its international personality, defending its national interests and developing mutually beneficial cooperation with states that share the principles of sovereign equality, mutual respect and international law.