Appearance and Issuance Fees
The World Passport is similar in appearance to a national passport or other travel document. Indeed, the appearance is so close that in 1974 a criminal case was lodged against Garry Davis in France regarding his issuance of World Passports. In 1979, the World Passport was a 42-page document, with a dark blue cover, and text in English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and Esperanto. It contained a five-page section for medical history and a six-page section for listing organisational affiliation. The fee charged at that time was $32 and postage for a three-year passport with the possibility of two years' extension of validity.
The latest edition of the World Passport was issued January 2007. It has an embedded "ghost" photo for security, covered with a plastic film. Its data page imitates the format of a machine-readable passport, with an alphanumeric code bar in the machine-readable zone (MRZ) enabling it to be scanned by an optical reader. However, in place of a valid ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code in the MRZ "issuer" and "nationality" fields, it uses the non-standard acronym "WSA". According to the WSA, the latest version of the World Passport was filed with the International Civil Aviation Organization. According to the WSA website, the application fee is $45 for a three-year document, $75 for a five-year document, and $100 for an eight-year document. A "World Donor Passport" valid for fifteen years with a special cover is issued for a donation of at least $400 which, according to the WSA, is used to issue free documents to refugees and stateless persons.
The applicant for World Passport needs to provide as proof of his or her identity along with the application for the World Passport either a notarized certification of the details on the form, a copy of his or her national identity papers or a fingerprint of the right index finger. There are known cases in which people have been able to obtain World Passports in names other than their legal names; see the section on fraudulent issuance below.
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