Travel and Tourism

Passports

A passport is a travel document issued by a national government that usually identifies the bearer as a national of the issuing state and requests that the bearer be permitted to enter and pass through other countries.
 
Passports are connected with the right of legal protection abroad and the right to enter one's country of nationality. Passports usually contain the holder's photograph, signature, date of birth, nationality, and sometimes other means of individual identification. Many countries are in the process of developing biometric properties for their passports in order to further confirm that the person presenting the passport is the legitimate holder.

History

One of the earliest references to passports is found in the Bibical book of Nehemiah. Circa 450 B.C., Nehemiah, an official serving King Artaxerxes of ancient Persia, asked permission to travel to Judah. The King agreed and gave Nehemiah a letter "to the governors beyond the river" requesting safe passage for him as he travelled through their lands, Nehemiah 2:7-9.

History (continued)

The term 'passport' most probably originates not from sea ports, but from medieval documents required to pass through the gate ('porte') of city walls. In medieval Europe such documents could be issued to any traveller by local authorities and generally contained a list of towns and cities through which the holder was permitted to pass. This system continued in France, for example, until the 1860s. During this time passports were often not required for travel to seaports, which were considered open trading points, but were required to travel from them to inland cities. Early passports often, but not always, contained a physical description of the holder, with photographs being added only in the early decades of the 20th century.
 
Before the First World War, passports were not widely used for international travel, and in most areas few people had one. Crossing a border was usually very easy, and no supporting documentation or declarations were required. They were, however, commonly used for travel within a handful of states such as the Ottoman Empire and tsarist Russia, where they were commonly held documents. During the war European governments suddenly had an interest in preventing people with useful skills or potential manpower from leaving, and keeping out spies or other security threats, so passports were demanded at border crossings. After the war the new controls were not removed and became standard procedure, although not without controversy. British tourists of the 1920s complained about the new annoyances, and especially about the attached photographs and physical descriptions, which led to a "nasty dehumanisation" in the words of one traveller.
 
Following the world wars, the League of Nations (International Conference on Passports, Customs Formalities and Through Tickets, 1920), and later the United Nations and the ICAO, issued standardisation guidelines on the layout and features of passports. These guidelines have largely shaped the modern passport.
 
In recent years there has been a movement to introduce biometric information to passports to improve identity security. It is at present questionable whether such technology is sufficiently developed and robust for this task. The U.S., for example, twice delayed the introduction of this technology due to poor reliability results.