Nansen passports were internationally recognized identity cards first issued by the League of Nations to stateless refugees. Designed in 1922 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 International Office for Refugees was awarded the 1938 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to establish the Nansen passports. The Nansen passport was developed after the Russian Revolution, when 1.4 million Russians moved out of Russia due to ideological conflicts with the communist government. Hundreds of thousands of them stayed permanently abroad. It proved to be a great success, one of the few that could be attributed to the League of Nations. While Nansen passports are no longer issued, present national authorities, including the United Nations, issue documents for stateless people and refugees. These include: Certificate of Identity (or Alien's Passport), Travel Document (also known as a "Refugee Travel Document") and Laissez-Passer. The idea of a refugee passport was renewed between 1998 and 2002 by the Republic of Lomar Foundation but discontinued in the wake of the post 9/11 constraint on such documents.
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- In Vladimir Nabokov's book Pnin, the narrator refers to it: "... that miserable thing, the Nansen Passport (a kind of parolee's card issued to Russian émigrés), ...".
