- published: 08 Dec 2011
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An international city is an autonomous or semi-autonomous city-state that is separate from the direct supervision of a single nation-state.
International cities had either had one or both of the following characteristics:
International cities were established mainly in the 1920s and in the 1940s, following World War I and World War II.
Some international cities, such as the Free City of Danzig and the Free Territory of Trieste, had their own currency and practiced tariff-free trade.
These international cities had limited self-governance (as in Danzig, with supervision from the League of Nations), or they were administered by a body of representatives from external nation-states (as in the city of Shanghai from 1845-1944 and the International Zone of Tangiers from 1923 to 1957).
The United Nations envisioned making Jerusalem into an international city with UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1948.
Pope Pius XII supported this idea in the 1949 encyclical Redemptoris Nostri Cruciatus. It was later re-proposed during the papacies of John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.