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Thomas de Waal De Waal is a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. More > Abkhazia today is in the peculiar state of having both entrenched its de facto separation from Georgia but also finding itself in almost complete international isolation.

Thomas de Waal De Waal is a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. More > The modern history of South Ossetia is a tragic one in which a generally peaceful region was first dragged into an unnecessary war with Georgia in the 1990s, then became the centre of the Georgian-Russian conflict of 2008.

We all have a postal address, where a letter or a postcard can be sent. A house number, a street, a town and a country give each of us a personal geography that allows anyone in the world to communicate with us. Except some of us do not. A small category of people in the world do not have an international postal address because their countries do not belong to the world’s postal system – and by extension the common international space.