Summary

At the end of WWI, half a million prisoners of war were stranded, many in Russia, which was unable to help them. The League of Nations asked Fridtjof Nansen, a famous Norwegian explorer, to get them home. By 1922, he had repatriated 428,000 PoWs.

While in Russia, Nansen saw millions of Russian refugees fleeing war and famine. The League made him High Commissioner for Refugees, and his team provided food, shelter, and medical aid. Many refugees had no legal papers, so he created the Nansen Passport certificate of identity, accepted by 52 countries.

After 1922 his work expanded to help Greek refugees fleeing Turkey and, later, Armenians, Bulgarians and Assyrians, whom he helped resettle in places like Soviet Armenia, Syria, Lebanon, and Canada. Meanwhile, the ILO helped 50,000 refugees find work.

In this, however, the League gave little financial support, and in 1930 it shut down the Commission, transferring the work to an autonomous organisation, the Nansen International Office, with plans to end the work altogether by 1939. In 1933, a Convention of refugee rights was agreed, but only eight countries ratified it. And as Jews fled Nazi Germany after 1933, most nations refused to take them in. After 1938, refugee aid was largely handled by the USA.

The League of Nations: PoWs and Refugees

Prisoners of War

The end of WWI left half a million Prisoners of War stranded across Europe; 300,000 were in Russia which, gripped by revolution and civil war, was unable to do anything for them. In April 1920, the League asked Fridtjof Nansen – a famous Norwegian explorer and celebrity – to organise their repatriation.

It was a miracle of administration, matching half-a-million people to places and organising their transport, but Nansen was able to report to the Assembly in 1928 that 427,886 prisoners had been repatriated to around 30 different countries.

The High Commission for Refugees

Whilst in Russia, Nansen had been so upset by the poverty and famine he saw, that he had organised a humanitarian project called the Nansen Mission. As the Civil War continued, however, things got worse, and eastern Europe found itself facing a wave of 2 million Russian refugees

In 1921, therefore, the League decided that it was “the only supernational political authority capable of solving a problem which is beyond the power of humanitarian organisations” and asked Nansen to become the High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Commission provided humanitarian aid (e.g. food, clothing, and shelter), along with medical assistance and inoculations. One of the greatest problems facing the refugees was that they had no papers, so Nansen introduced a Certificate of identity (nicknamed the ‘Nansen passport’), which was recognized by 52 countries.

The Commission’s work soon extended beyond Russia.

The Graeco-Turkish War of 1919–1922 expelled hundreds of thousands of Greek refugees which the Greek state was unable to cope with. Nansen devised a population exchange whereby half a million Turks in Greece were returned to Turkey, with full financial compensation. Meanwhile, he made loans available for the construction of self-supporting settlements for refugees who had nowhere in Greece to go.

In 1926, Bulgaria – faced with absorbing ¼ million Bulgarians fleeing from Greece – appealed to the League for similar help.

From 1925 onwards, Nansen devoted much time trying to Armenian refugees – victims of the Armenian genocide (1915-16) and ethnic persecution in Turkey – trying to establish a national home for them within the borders of Soviet Armenia. From 1927, he also helped Assyrians 1927 – also fleeing ethnic persecution in Turkey.

One of his problems – as today – was that no-one wanted to take in refugees. Nansen tried both Brazil and British Guiana as possible homelands for the Assyrian refugees, before eventually finding them a place in Syria. Many Armenians were homed in specially constructed houses in villages in Syria and Lebanon. (Germans fleeing the Nazis in 1935 were resettled in Paraguay.)

Another problem facing the refugees was finding work in their adopted countries. In 1925, therefore, Nansen proposed that this task should be given to the International Labour Organisation of the League. The ILO proved good at its job; in the years 1925-28 it found work for 50,000 refugees (including work on farms in Canada and the USA for 16,000 Ukrainians).

Nevertheless, in 1928 Nansen reported to the League that the Commission was getting on top of the problem, which should be solved by 1938.

The Contribution of the League

So … to what extent does the League deserve credit for this?

It can be argued that the work of the Commission’s officials – particularly of Nansen himself – was fantastic (he won the Nobel Peace Prize). But the member nations of the League? Not so much.

The Commission struggled throughout with limited finances and manpower. In 1921 Nansen was given administrative expenses only, and was forced seek help from the Red Cross and to fund-raise from private sources. In 1925 a scheme to build an Armenian settlement in Soviet Armenia failed when the League refused to grant a small sum to buy the land.

In 1927, when he asked for authority to help refugees in the Balkans – including Ruthenians, Montenegrins, and Jewish refugees in Romania – the League refused.

And its response to his Report that the Commission was getting on top of the problem was to close down the Commission, sack him as High Commissioner, and set up instead the Nansen International Office (1930) as an autonomous organisation, with plans for it to be slowly wound down.

The 1933 Convention and after

The Nansen International Office continued the work of the Commission, helping refugees in Central and South-eastern Europe, France, Syria and China. Its greatest achievement was to organise the 1933 Refugee Convention (26 October 1933), which improved the Nansen certificate system and recommended civil rights for refugees in respect of jobs, welfare and taxation.

By this time, however, the Great Depression and the decline of League’s moral influence were hardening attitudes towards refugees still further. The League had no powers to enforce the Convention, which was signed only by 14 states, and ratified only by 8 with restrictions

After 1933, moreover, the League faced a new refugee problem, as non-Aryans fled Nazi Germany. When the League tried to set up a High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and other), the German delegation objected, so it had to be set up as a completely independent body. Its work received so little support that in 1935 the American High Commissioner James McDonald resigned. When President Roosevelt organised a conference on the refugee crisis in 1938, delegates from 32 countries expressed heartfelt sympathy for the Jews and other non-Aryans fleeing Germany … but only one country, the Dominican Republic, offered to take in any refugees.

After 1938, the work to help refugees was increasingly done by an American organisation, the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (1938), which would become the International Refugee Organisation of the United Nations in 1947.