The Nansen Passport, International Law, and the Legal Imagination, 1921–30

In 1921 Fridtjof Nansen, in his role as High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations designed the first refugee identity certificates in an attempt to deal with the hundreds-of-thousands of stateless Russians scattered throughout Europe. The documents, which would become popularly known as Nansen Passports, were a symbol of a new era for many. People from all over the world, many of whom were not refugees and not Russian, wrote to the League in order to request one of these new passports believing that they represented a new kind of "international" citizenship.

These “passports” emerged as statelessness expanded rapidly and debates over the subjectivity of individuals within international law were raging among legal scholars and diplomats. By the end of the decade the Permanent Court of International Justice would acknowledge that actors beyond just states could, perhaps, be subjects of international law. This change set in motion a legal revolution that would enable one organization or even one man theoretically to stand against a state.

My paper by looking at League documents, decisions of the Permanent Court of International Justice, and legal treatises, explores the paradox of the Nansen passport and its impact on both the public imagination and international legal theory. As a legal document it was anchored firmly in a conception of a world filled with sovereign states. It emerged out of a traditional multi-lateral conference that created a simple and narrowly worded multi-lateral treaty—hardly the foundations of a revolution in international legal thought. Yet, despite constant protestations by the League to the contrary, in the popular imagination the Nansen passport sat above state sovereignty and gave the bearer an international status.