NEW YORK: On May 25, 1948, a former United States Army flier entered the American Embassy in Paris, renounced his American citizenship and, as astonished officials looked on, declared himself a citizen of the world.
In the decades that followed, until the end of his long life last week, he remained by choice a stateless man - entering, leaving, being regularly expelled from and frequently arrested in a spate of countries, carrying a passport of his own devising, as the international news media chronicled his every move.
His rationale was %simple, his aim immense: if there were no nation-states, he believed, there would be 8%no wars.
Garry Davis, a longtime peace advocate, former Broadway song-and-dance man and self-declared World Citizen No. 1, who is widely regarded as the dean of the One World movement, a quest to erase national boundaries that today has nearly a million adherents worldwide, died in Williston, Vermont.
"I am not a man without a country," Davis told Newsweek in 1978, "merely a man without nationality."
Davis was not the first person to declare himself a world citizen, but he was inarguably the most visible, most vocal and most indefatigable.
The One World model has had its share of prominent adherents, among them Albert Schweitzer,Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Einstein and E B White.
Davis was no armchair theorist: 60 years ago, he established the World Government of World Citizens, a self-proclaimed international governmental body that has issued documents - passports, identity cards, birth and marriage certificates - and occasional postage stamps and currency.
He periodically ran for president of the world, always unopposed.
To date, more than 2.5 million World Government documents have been issued, according to the World Service Authority, the group's administrative arm.
Whether Davis was a visionary utopian or a quixotic naif was long debated by press and public. His supporters argued that the documents he issued had genuine value for refugees and other stateless people.
Just weeks before he died, Davis had a world passport sent, via Russian authorities, to Edward Snowden, the %fugitive former NSA contractor accused of violating espionage laws, whose US passport was revoked. Snowden could not be reached for comment.
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