2.1 A: The passport Duration: 45 minutes Instructions: Level of complexity: 1 Watch this video on passports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRvaT4Jgv2Q; followed by this short clip from the movie “The Terminal”, starring Tom Hanks, which portrays the limbo that many stateless people find themselves trapped in due to not having a nationality and being without a passport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHPVY_j2HDY. Knowledge/Subjects: Civics, Geography, Governance, International Relations, Politics If no internet connection is available, discuss the following with the group: 1. What is a passport? • A passport is a document issued by the authorities of a country that verifies that an individual is a citizen of that country, his/her identity (full name, nationality, date and place of birth) and gives them the right to travel under its protection. 2. What is the function of a passport? • Skills: Comparative Analysis, Critical thinking, Persuasive Argumentation, Research, Self-Awareness Values/Attitudes: Sense of identity Objectives: • For participants to explore how passports transform the idea of citizenship into something tangible and help people to understand the rights that they enjoy as citizens of a country. • For participants to understand that as stateless people lack a nationality and thus a passport, they are excluded from enjoying the rights of a citizen. Materials: Internet access (optional) Passports are used as proof of nationality. When you possess a passport, this means that your country of origin vouches for you, assuring other nations that you are in fact the person you say you are. If you have the passport of country X, this is the country that you formally ‘belong’ to and where you should be able to enjoy rights as a citizen. 3. Is it possible for a country to revoke a passport? • As countries control the passport system, apart from issuing a passport, a country can also revoke your passport. Some countries have rules allowing them to take away the nationality and passports of people who do very bad things – for instance if they join wars against their own country or engage in acts of terrorism. Sometimes these laws are used in the wrong way to target activists, journalists or peaceful protestors and their children, although they haven’t done anything wrong. Sometimes countries also decide to withdraw nationality from their own citizens for other reasons, for instance because they consider ethnic or religious minority groups to be outsiders. And sometimes people fail to acquire any nationality to begin with. In other words, there are lots of ways in which people can end up without a nationality - and therefore without a passport - as shown in the stories of the different people Neha encounters in the book. After watching the two videos or discussing the questions set out above, remind participants that if a person is stateless, they are unable to get a passport from any country so their ability to enjoy the rights of a citizen such as travelling internationally legally is pretty much non-existent. Ask them to discuss the following questions: 1. What are some solutions to the issue of stateless individuals not having a passport? Can you think of any way of making it possible for those who are stateless to travel freely? 2. One group of individuals had the idea of making a world citizen passport for anyone to have. You can read about this organisation and what they are trying to do here: http://www.worldservice.org/docpass.html a. What do you think of the idea of having a world citizen passport? b. Why do you think this idea has not caught on? 32