Source – theatlantic.com
– When rapper Mos Def was arrested for traveling with the unofficial document, he brought to attention a long-running peace movement:
Yasiin Bey, the American rapper formerly known as Mos Def, has been charged with violating South Africa’s immigration laws after he was arrested last week trying to leave the country on an unrecognized travel document. Bey, who is free on bail, will appear in court on March 8, officials said on Wednesday. The entertainer was arrested on Thursday in Cape Town when he produced a “World Passport” to get on a flight to Ethiopia.
The ‘World Passport’ That’s Trying to Erase National Boundaries
Among all the passports in the world, the “world passport” would probably rank pretty low on the power scale . Yet, a handful of the most influential people in the U.S. have been issued one, including Oprah Winfrey, Edward Snowden, and President Barack Obama. It’s also held by some of the most powerless people in developing countries.
If you fit into neither of those groups, chances are you hadn’t heard of a world passport until recently, when Yasiin Bey—formerly known as Mos Def—was detained after using one to leave South Africa. (Bey, who was born Dante Smith, announced his retirement earlier this week.) South African officials announced that the American rapper will be tried in court for using a false identity, an unofficial passport, and for helping his family stay in the country illegally.
In pics: World’s most powerful passports, ranked
GoEuro.com, a travel search comparison website, recently commissioned a poll to determine the most powerful passports around the world. The site analysed passports of different countries on the basis of their eligibility for visa-free entry to other countries, cost of application and the number of hours the citizens have to work at minimum wage to afford the document. Let’s find out which passports are best for the most hassle-free travelling.
More than 750,000 people have registered to obtain a World Passport, issued by the World Service Authority (WSA), a small nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. The process is as simple as filling out an application and paying the membership fee of up to $100. The passport itself looks like any other, except it’s printed in seven languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Esperanto.
But it’s still unclear which countries actually accept the World Passport for legal travel. The WSA claims on its website that at least 160 countries have stamped the passport on at least one occasion. At the same time, several people have been arrested by immigration officials for using it, including Bey and WSA founder Garry Davis, who’s been thrown in jail dozens of times. The risk of using one today is even bigger as countries ramp up security measures in the face of recent terror attacks across the globe. Just this week, the Obama administration introduced new visa requirements for Europeans with dual citizenship or those who have traveled to Iran, Iraq, Syria, or Sudan in the past five years.
So why have so many registered for a passport that may not be legal? Many of the applications come from refugees or those who aren’t able to obtain official documents from their own countries, according to Foreign Policy . To many, it’s a determined attempt to gain both an identity and the freedom to travel. The organization itself was founded on a key human rights principle declared by the United Nations: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” But because of the passport’s murky legality, some have called it a scam .
To others, though, the World Passport is symbolic. Bey’s representative told Foreign Policy that he wanted to use the alternative passport “because it’s more representative of his personal ideals and philosophies.” The organization was founded not long after Davis renounced his American citizenship in 1948. After losing his brother in World War II and experiencing war himself as a bomber pilot, the late peace activist declared himself simply as a “world citizen.” Davis became well known as the “dean” of the so-called One World movement, according to The New York Times. The movement essentially called for a world without national borders.
Throughout his lifetime, Davis traveled the world, rallying supporters and issuing world passports to more than a thousand war refugees and stateless people. He landed in the public spotlight time and time again—once for holding a rally at the U.N. Assembly in Paris, another time for entering a psychiatric ward after trying to see Queen Elizabeth in person, and again for running against Ronald Reagan for president. Somewhere along the line, the One World movement attracted tens of thousands of supporters, including the likes of Albert Einstein, Albert Camus, and E. B. White.
By the time he died in 2013 at the age of 91, he had left behind a fascinating and somewhat bizarre legacy. Though the legality of the World Passport is often contested, David Gallup, who now heads WSA, told the Burlington Free Press that it brings, at the very least, a sense of belonging to refugees.
“Even if the final outcome is not successful,” he said, “people feel as if they’ve regained their human dignity because we give them hope.”
Related…
What’s a World Passport?
By Daniel Engber
It works in Tanzania but not in America.
On Thursday, a Bolivian judge charged an American-born man with planning a pair of deadly hotel bombings in La Paz earlier this week. Triston Jay Amero grew up in California but had tried to renounce his U.S. citizenship; he considers himself a “world citizen” and has traveled extensively in Latin America using a so-called “world passport.” Can you really use a “world passport” for international travel?
Yes, but it depends on where you’re going. According to the World Service Authority—the Washington-based organization that issues world passports—more than 150 countries have accepted the document at least once. Six more countries have provided the WSA with a formal letter of recognition of the world passport, most recently Tanzania in 1995. (The others to grant it official status are Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Mauritania, Togo, and Zambia. Two of those countries have since written to say they’ve changed their minds.)
It’s still a crapshoot when you travel with nothing but a world passport. Your chances of success will likely depend on the whim (or ignorance) of the schlub working customs at your destination. With this in mind, the WSA doesn’t guarantee that any country will accept the document, and it even offers a specific warning about countries where the passport “almost never” works: Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States. *
In general, the U.S. State Department will accept any passport from a nation that the U.S. officially recognizes, with exceptions made for other kinds of passports on a case-by-case basis. Regular diplomatic relations are not a prerequisite: You can get an American visa without special authorization on a passport from Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, the West Bank and Gaza, or Taiwan (but not North Korea). Passports from the WSA get a special mention in the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual: “World Service Authority Passports are not acceptable as ‘passports’ for visa issuing purposes … the document is a 40-page, passport-size document with a bright blue cover with gold lettering.”
The world passport does look a lot like a regular, national passport, except it’s printed in seven languages (including Esperanto). Anyone who wants one can declare himself a citizen of the world and fill out an application form at the WSA Web site. While you don’t have to renounce your national citizenship, you do have to sign a statement saying you understand the world passport’s limitations. A three-year version costs $45; a five-year one costs $75.
A peace activist named Garry Davis created the WSA in 1953 and traveled around the world using the first world passport ever issued. (The organization says they’ve issued more than a half-million world passports since then.) Davis, a former World War II bomber pilot, had renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1948 and gained notoriety by picketing the fledgling United Nations in Paris. He argued that free travel was a fundamental human right and that world peace required a global government as opposed to a system of nation-states.
He took his first trip on the world passport in 1956, from New York to Bombay. Davis told a New York Times reporter that theIndian customs official seemed confused but stamped it just the same. He would later use the passport to enter Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland.
The passport didn’t always work, and Davis found himself in jail dozens of times. He’s also been convicted of fraud for selling the world passport, and some have accused the WSA of making money off of refugees or would-be emigrants.
Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks David Gallup of the World Service Authority.
Correction, March 27, 2006: This article originally and incorrectly stated that the World Security Authority warns that its “world passport” probably won’t work in England. The WSA says the world passport won’t work in Great Britain. Return to the corrected sentence.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/03/whats_a_world_passport.html
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