The "World Passport"
 

Well, this is a new one on me -- a so-called world passport issued by a DC nonprofit, not by any country authority. They claim it's legal and has been accepted by many countries, both officially and on case-by-case bases. A short excerpt from the description:

The World Passport is...a meaningful symbol and sometimes powerful tool for the implementation of the fundamental human right of freedom of travel. By its very existence it challenges the exclusive assumption of sovereignty of the nation-state system. It is designed however to conform to nation-state requirements for travel documents.

If you look around the site you'll see they have lots of other documents, such as a birth certificate, ID card, marriage certificate, and even a political asylum card.

Personally, I think it's a great idea and really does embody the idea of being a true world citizen. It even uses Esperanto as one of the languages! It contains the country of birth, but not the country of residence.

That said, I'd never actually try to use it as a travel document. Any FTers out there have one? Anyone try to use it?

These sort of things have been around for years. People have had mixed luck traveling on them but it is generally not a bright idea if you actually want to travel with ease.

I bet you can find 500 of these things if you do a google search.

I'll bear it in mind the next time I have to go to Burkina Faso and Mauritania. :D

It might be useful for interplanetary travel. :D

What would be funnier would be to present it to an ID checker at your US airport of choice and have them say "The World, where's that? I've never seen a passport from that country before"

Passport from "Banana Republic" has allegedly worked before. :D

.... my concern would be that some knee-jerk overreactionary in the government, finding this on the internet, would try to make a stink about it. Perhaps even prompting a violent raid by the FBI before sunrise. :eek:

I have read that people have used a passport from the Conch Republic (aka Key West, Florida) to cross international borders. I think this is more a case of lazy and/or indifferent border guards than any international recognition of Key West's nation status, though.

The Province of Friesland in the Netherlands issues "passports" to children in which they can collect stamps of various tourist attractions. Someone pasted his picture in that "passport" and used it to travel to many countries accross Africa....
On the other hand, when Uruguayan friends of mine visited the Soviet Union in the mid 1980's they were stopped at immigration because the officers had never heard about the Republica Oriental de Uruguay. Someone had to get an atlas and they were asked to point out where Uruguay is.... :D

Wikipedia write up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Passport

News article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2138567/

I have a Conch Republic sticker on my car :D It's like those EU ones just has "CR"

I see a lot of the 'OBX' ones in NC, for the Outer Banks.