4 - Sovereign Persons

Summary

In the aftermath of World War I, some politicians, scholars, and lawyers argued that individuals ought to be subjects of international law and bear rights within the international order. With the collapse of the Russian Empire and the onset of revolution, hundreds of thousands of Russians found themselves effectively stateless. Without a state to protect them, these Russians had no identity documents and no effective nationality. The League of Nations and the International Labor Organization worked with various states to create the first refugee passport system. However, unlike today’s system that is based upon someone’s “well-founded fear” of persecution, eligibility for refugee status in the interwar period was based, in part, on one’s former nationality. Even refugees couldn’t escape the tyranny of nationality as the fundamental classification of the individual in the international realm.