Nansen passport
| Nansen passport | |
|---|---|
 The front cover of a Nansen passport (green stripe) | |
| Issued by |
.svg.png){kind=small} League of Nations |
| Type of document | Passport |
| Purpose | Identification |
| Eligibility requirements | stateless refugees |
Nansen passports were internationally recognized refugee travel documents, first issued by the League of Nations to stateless refugees.
History
The first Nansen passports were issued following an international agreement reached at the Intergovernmental Conference on Identity Certificates for Russian Refugees, convened by Fridtjof Nansen in Geneva from July 3, 1922 to July 5, 1922 in his role as High Commissioner for Refugees for the League of Nations.[1] By 1942, they were honoured by governments in 52 countries. Approximately 450,000 Nansen passports were provided[2] to stateless people and refugees who needed travel documents but could not obtain one from a national authority.
The Nansen passport was originally provided to refugees from the Russian civil war. It is estimated that about 800,000 Russian refugees had become stateless when Lenin revoked citizenship for all Russian expatriates in 1921.[3]
In 1933, the arrangement was broadened to also include Armenian, Assyrian, and Turkish refugees.
Following Nansen's death in 1930, the passport was handled by the Nansen International Office for Refugees within the League of Nations. At that point the passport no longer included a reference to the 1922 conference, but were issued in the name of the League. The office was closed in 1938; passports were thereafter issued by a new agency, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees in London.[4]
A stamp in a Nansen passport
On the wall of City Hall in Oslo, Norway
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nansen International Office for Refugees was awarded the 1938 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to establish the Nansen passports.[5]
Today
While Nansen passports are no longer issued, existing national and supranational authorities, including the United Nations, issue travel documents for stateless people and refugees, including certificates of identity (or "alien's passports") and refugee travel documents.
Notable holders
- Robert Capa
- Marc Chagall
- Alexander Galich
- Alexander Grothendieck[6]
- G. I. Gurdjieff
- Anatol Heintz
- Vladimir Nabokov
- Aristotle Onassis
- Anna Pavlova
- Jadwiga Piłsudska
- Sergey Rakhmaninov
- Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson
- Otto Skorzeny
- Igor Stravinsky[7]
References
- ↑ "Documents from the League of Nations Archives" (PDF). Refugee Survey Quarterly. 22 (1): 71–73. 2003. doi:10.1093/rsq/22.1.71. Retrieved June 25, 2014.
- ↑ Nansen-pass Store Norske Leksikon, retrieved December 11, 2012
- ↑ Arkivverket.no (in Norwegian), retrieved December 11, 2012
- ↑ The Nansen Office Arkivverket. Retrieved 2 December 2014
- ↑ Fridtjof Nansen, Nobelprize.org, 1922. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
- ↑ Mumford, David (2015). "(Obituary) Alexander Grothendieck (1928-2014) Mathematician who rebuilt algebraic geometry.". Retrieved 2015-10-14.
- ↑ Nansenkontoret Arkivverket.no (in Norwegian), retrieved December 11, 2012
External links
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1 A) Includes Crown Dependencies, British Overseas Territories, and former British plantations, crown colonies, colonies, protectorates, protected states, mandates, trust territories and other British possessions. 2 Open border with Schengen Area. 3 Russia is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. The vast majority of its population (80%) lives in European Russia, therefore Russia as a whole is included as a European country here. 4 Turkey is a transcontinental country in the Middle East and Southeast Europe. Turkey has a small part of its territory (3%) in Southeast Europe called Turkish Thrace. 5 Azerbaijan and Georgia (Abkhazia; South Ossetia) are transcontinental countries. Both have a small part of their territories in the European part of the Caucasus. 6 Kazakhstan is a transcontinental country. Kazakhstan has a small part of its territories located west of the Urals in Eastern Europe. 7 Armenia (Nagorno-Karabakh) and Cyprus (Northern Cyprus) are entirely in Southwest Asia but having socio-political connections with Europe. 8 Egypt is a transcontinental country in North Africa and Western Asia. Egypt has a small part of its territory in Western Asia called Sinai peninsula. 9 Partially recognized. 10 Not recognized by any other state. 11 Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China 12 The Soviet Union was a transcontinental country located in Eurasia
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