Nansen passports, originally and officially stateless persons passports, were internationally recognized

refugee travel document A refugee travel document (also called a 1951 Convention travel document or Geneva passport) is a travel document issued to a refugee by the state in which they normally reside in allowing them to travel outside that state and to return there. Re ...

s from 1922 to 1938, first issued by the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference th ...

's Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees to stateless

refugees A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

. They quickly became known as "Nansen passports" for their promoter, the Norwegian statesman and polar explorer

Fridtjof Nansen Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (; 10 October 186113 May 1930) was a Norwegian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He gained prominence at various points in his life as an explorer, scientist, diplomat, and humanitarian. He led the team t ...

History

The end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

saw significant turmoil, leading to a refugee crisis. Numerous governments were toppled, and national borders were redrawn, often along generally ethnic lines. Civil war broke out in some countries. Many people left their homes because of war or persecution or fear thereof. The upheaval resulted in many people being without passports, or even nations to issue them, which prevented much international travel, often trapping refugees. The precipitating event for the Nansen passport was the 1921 announcement by the new government of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

revoking the citizenship of Russians living abroad, including some 800,000 refugees from the

Russian civil war {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...

. The first Nansen passports were issued following an international agreement reached at the Intergovernmental Conference on Identity Certificates for Russian Refugees, convened by

in Geneva from July 3, 1922, to July 5, 1922, in his role as High Commissioner for Refugees for the

. By 1942, they were honoured by governments in 52 countries. In 1924, the Nansen arrangement was broadened to also include Armenian, and in 1928 to

Assyrian Assyrian may refer to: * Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia. * Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire. ** Early Assyrian Period ** Old Assyrian Period ** Middle Assyrian Empire ** Neo-Assyrian Empire * Assyri ...

, Assyro-Chaldean, Bulgarian and Turkish refugees. Approximately 450,000 Nansen passports were provided to stateless people and refugees who needed travel documents, but could not obtain one from a national authority. 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 under the Protection of the League of Nations in London.

Image gallery

File:Nansen cs cover.jpg, Nansen passport cover;
Police office,

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

, 1930 File:Nansen cs stamp.jpg, Nansen passport renewal stamp;
Nansen International Office for Refugees, 1930 File:Oslo Nansen.JPG, Memorial plaque (partial view);
outside wall,

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

, 2007

Legacy

The Nansen International Office for Refugees was awarded the 1938

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolo ...

for its efforts to establish the Nansen passports. 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

Notable bearers

Robert Capa Robert Capa (born Endre Ernő Friedmann; October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was a Hungarian-American war photographer and photojournalist as well as the companion and professional partner of photographer Gerda Taro. He is considered by some to b ...

Sergiu Celibidache Sergiu Celibidache (; 14 August 1996) was a Romanian conductor, composer, musical theorist, and teacher. Educated in his native Romania, and later in Paris and Berlin, Celibidache's career in music spanned over five decades, including tenures ...

Princess Vera Constantinovna of Russia Princess Vera Constantinovna of Russia, also Vera Konstantinovna (russian: link=no, Вера Константиновна Романова; 24 April 1906 – 11 January 2001), was the youngest child of Grand Duke Konstantine Konstantinovich ...

Marc Chagall Marc Chagall; russian: link=no, Марк Заха́рович Шага́л ; be, Марк Захаравіч Шагал . (born Moishe Shagal; 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with se ...

Françoise Frenkel Françoise Frenkel (14 July 1889 - 18 January 1975) was a lifelong book lover, bookstore owner and author. With her husband, in 1921 she opened the "Maison du Livre français", Berlin's first specialist French book store, which she ran till 1939. ...

* Alexander Galich *

Zuzanna Ginczanka Zuzanna Ginczanka, '' pen name'' of Zuzanna Polina Gincburg (March 22, 1917 – January 1945) was a Polish- Jewish poet of the interwar period. Although she published only a single collection of poetry in her lifetime, the book ''O centaurach'' ...

* Alexander Grothendieck * G. I. Gurdjieff *

Anatol Heintz Anatol Heintz (9 February 1898 – 23 February 1975) was a Russo-Norwegian palaeontologist. He was born in Petrograd to the geophysicist Yevgeniy Alfredovich Heintz (1869–1918) and Olga Fyodorovna Hoffmann (1871–1958). He had two older sib ...

Ze'ev Jabotinsky Ze'ev Jabotinsky ( he, זְאֵב זַ׳בּוֹטִינְסְקִי, ''Ze'ev Zhabotinski'';, ''Wolf Zhabotinski'' 17 October 1880 – 3 August 1940), born Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky, was a Russian Jewish Revisionist Zionist leade ...

Youri Messen-Jaschin Youri Messen-Jaschin is an artist of Latvian origin, born in Arosa, Switzerland, in 1941. He often combines oils and gouaches. His favourite colors are: strong reds, yellows, greens, and blue. He also works in body painting, exhibiting his works ...

– artist

Op art Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden image ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...

– fictionally, Timofey Pnin, the protagonist in ''

Pnin ''Pnin'' () is Vladimir Nabokov's 13th novel and his fourth written in English; it was published in 1957. The success of ''Pnin'' in the United States launched Nabokov's career into literary prominence. Its eponymous protagonist, Timofey Pavlovic ...

'', migrated to the United States on a Nansen passport, as did Valeria, the first wife of Humbert Humbert in ''

Lolita ''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Hum ...

'' *

Aristotle Onassis Aristotle Socrates Onassis (, ; el, Αριστοτέλης Ωνάσης, Aristotélis Onásis, ; 20 January 1906 – 15 March 1975), was a Greek-Argentinian shipping magnate who amassed the world's largest privately-owned shipping fleet and wa ...

Krikor Pambuccian Krikor (Grigore) Pambuccian ( hy, Գրիգոր Բամպուքծեան; 23 August 1915 – 1996) was an Armenian–Romanian Professor of Pathology at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy and longtime Vice-President of the Armeni ...

Colonel Tom Parker Thomas Andrew Parker (born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk; June 26, 1909 January 21, 1997),

Anna Pavlova Anna Pavlovna Pavlova ( , rus, Анна Павловна Павлова ), born Anna Matveyevna Pavlova ( rus, Анна Матвеевна Павлова; – 23 January 1931), was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20t ...

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1890–1958) Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (russian: Великая Княгиня Мария Павловна; – 13 December 1958), known as ''Maria Pavlovna the Younger'', was a granddaughter of Alexander II of Russia. She was a paternal first c ...

* St.

Grigol Peradze Saint Grigol Peradze ( ka, გრიგოლ ფერაძე; 13 September 1899 – 6 December 1942) was a prominent Georgian ecclesiastic figure, philologist, theologian, historian, and professor of patristics in the interwar period. Life ...

* Jadwiga Piłsudska * Sergey Rakhmaninov * Dimitri Riabouchinsky *

Rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as '' semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form o ...

Menachem Mendel Schneerson Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Modern Hebrew: מנחם מענדל שניאורסון; old-fashioned spelling: מנחם מענדל שניאורסאהן; April 5, 1902 OS – June 12, 1994; AM 11 Nissan 5662 – 3 Tammuz 5754), known to man ...

Otto Skorzeny Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian-born German SS-''Obersturmbannführer'' (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in a number of operations, including t ...

Victor Starffin Victor Starffin ( rus, Виктор Константинович Старухин, Viktor Konstantinovich Starukhin, 1 May 1916 – 12 January 1957), nicknamed , was a Japanese baseball player. While playing in Japan, he became the first professio ...

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...

Nansenkontoret
Arkivverket.no (in Norwegian), retrieved December 11, 2012The Nansen Office
Arkivverket.no, retrieved December 11, 2012 *

Dries Riphagen Bernardus Andreas "Dries" Riphagen (7 September 1909 – 13 May 1973) was a Dutch gangster and Nazi collaborator who is best known in the Netherlands for collaborating with the Nazi (SD) to locate as many Dutch Jews as possible and have the ...

* King Alfonso XIII of Spain

References

External links

Fridtjof Nansen Memorial Lecture Series

United Nations University The (UNU) is the think tank and academic arm of the United Nations. Headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, with diplomatic status as a UN institution, its mission is to help resolve global issues related to human development and welfare thr ...

The Nansen Passport
New York University Department of Media, Culture, and Communication's Media Archaeology's Dead Media Archive {{Passports Defunct passports

Passport A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that contains a person's identity. A person with a passport can travel to and from foreign countries more easily and access consular assistance. A passport certifies the personal ...