Today , there are more than 15 million people globally who are legally designated as “ stateless ”— denied nationality from any country and , in turn , access to basic rights such as education , healthcare , employment and freedom of movement . With no country to claim and therefore passport-less , they are citizens of nowhere . Between 1922 and 1938 , Fridtjof Nansen , who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of the displaced , created the ‘ Nansen passports ’ for refugees , which enabled around 450,000 people to cross national borders .
Deeply troubled by the plight of the stateless , Cairo-based artist and graphic designer Ahmad Hammoud endeavored to “ create a community for the stateless to belong to ” by imagining what a hypothetical 21st-century passport for them could look like . Hammoud ’ s decolonizing design of the Passport for the Stateless is in English and Arabic , with pages featuring both imagery and language of dissent . In 2016 however , Hammoud ’ s artwork became embroiled in an extraordinary situation that served to prove its charged resonance . While en route back to the artist in Cairo after being exhibited in Dubai , Egyptian customs officials redlined its 32 pages and nearly tore the booklet in half . This act of suspicion and attempt at the destruction of the Passport for the Stateless further underscores Hammoud ’ s urgent call , similarly to the ‘ Nansen passports ’ of the early 20th century , for attention to the ways in which those who do not have access to passports are disenfranchised and bereft of rights .
Passport for the Stateless was damaged in travel because it posed a “ threat ” to the pristine standards of passport law . Torn and drawn on , the aggression towards a stateless passport is microscopic in comparison to the realities of treatment to refugees . Yet , when the paper is destroyed , the human being remains in existence . A soul , a life , a breathing being cannot simply be “ stamped ” with approval .
— Brittney Pieper Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies , Art History
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