No man’s land of everyone: Franz Josef Land

2015

Organiser: Ferenc Gróf

Franz Josef Land, which belongs to Russia, is an archipelago of 192 islands located near the North Pole. The archipelago was discovered and named by an Austro-Hungarian expedition at the end of the 19th century. For decades, this ice-covered territory was considered terra nullius, meaning “belonging to no one,” until it was annexed by the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

The project would center around a petition: that Franz Josef Land once again become terra nullius under the auspices of the United Nations, and that each of the 192 UN member states may have one island. We call upon Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin to renounce, on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation, Russian sovereignty over Franz Josef Land in favor of all other UN member states.