- A passport issued after World War I by the League of Nations to refugees unable to establish citizenship.
- A passport issued to stateless persons by the League of Nations after World War I.
Dictionary.com, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nansen+passport (accessed on April 12, 2012)
- A document of identification issued to stateless people after the First World War, named after the Norwegian arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), who was responsible for its issue. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for organizing relief work among victims of the Russian famine.
Encyclopedia.com, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O214-Nansenpassport.html (accessed on April 12, 2012)
French translation: Passeport Nansen
Example of a Nansen Passport: http://www.oca.no/press/releases/3551/norway-at-la-biennale-di-venezia.1 (accessed on April 12, 2012)
“One of the difficulties encountered by Dr. Nansen in connexion with the question of facilitating the settlement of refugees in a reception country was the absence of passports on which entry or exit visas could be affixed. Here was yet another example of the impossibility of applying the rules of common law to stateless persons without some previous measures to mitigate the consequences of the absence of national protection.
The Inter-governmental Conference, held at Geneva on 22 August 1921, in which ten countries took part,[57] declared in favour of the creation of an identity and travel document which would make up for the lack of a national passport.”
UN Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons, A Study of Statelessness, United Nations, August 1949, Lake Success – New York, 1 August 1949, E/1112; E/1112/Add.1, available from: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae68c2d0.html (accessed April 12, 2012).
Nobel Lecture addressed on December 10, 1938, The Nansen International Office for Refugees, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1938/nansen-lecture.html (accessed on April 12, 2012).
UN Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons, A Study of Statelessness, United Nations, August 1949, Lake Success – New York, 1 August 1949, E/1112; E/1112/Add.1, available from: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae68c2d0.html (accessed April 12, 2012). – Gives an interesting historical perspective about statelessness before and after World War II, and why the Nansen passport was created.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees, An Introduction to the International Protection of Refugess (RLD 1), June 1992, available from: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3cce9a244.html (accessed on April 12, 2012).
Bauman, Robert, The Complete Guide to Offshore Residency, Dual Citizenship and Second Passports (2007) The Sovereign Society, 3.
Gibney, Matthew J. and Randall Hansen, Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present, Volume 1 (2005) ABC-CLIO, 441-443.
Hieronymi, Otto, “The Nansen Passport: A Tool of Freedom of Movement and of Protection” (2003) 22(1): Refugee Survey Quarterly, 36-47.
Kaprielian-Churchill, Isabel, “Rejecting “Misfits”: Canada and the Nansen Passport”, International Migration Review , Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 281-306
Nansen Hoyer, Liv, Nansen, a Family Portrait (1957) Longmans, Green.
Sammartino, Annemarie, The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914-1922 (2010) Cornell University Press, 179-186.
Zucker, Norman L. and Naomi Flink Zucker, Desperate Crossings: Seeking Refuge in America (1996) M.E. Sharpe, 18.