Origins
Designed in 1921 by Fridtjof Nansen, in 1942 they were honored by governments in 52 countries and were the first refugee travel documents. Approximately 450,000 Nansen passports were issued, helping hundreds of thousands of stateless people to immigrate to a country that would have them.
The Nansen passport was developed as a result of a series of citizenship laws in European countries, including but not limited to the United Kingdom, Germany and France, that excluded millions of ethnic minorities, which were erstwhile residents in their countries, from attaining citizenship. Hundreds of thousands of them stayed permanently abroad.
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A stamp in a Nansen Passport.
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On the wall of City Hall in Oslo, Norway
Read more about this topic: Nansen Passport
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
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“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)