Three Asian Countries–Japan, Singapore, and South Korea have topped The Henley Passport Index: Q3 2022 Global Ranking report and claimed the title of world’s most powerful passports, reversing pre-pandemic rankings majorly dominated by European nations.
A Japanese passport allows unrestricted entry to 193 countries, a step up from Singapore and South Korea.
The following two top-ranked countries were European– with Germany, and Spain ranked 3rd, with its citizens having access to 190 countries. The United States and the United Kingdom came at 6th and 7th positions along with other countries. Australia and Canada were in the 8th position, with the Czech Republic, Greece, and Malta.
HENLEY_PASSPORT_INDEX_2022_Q3The war-torn country Ukraine shares the 35th position with Macao and has a better ranking than Russia. Their passport allows access to 144 countries, whereas The Russian federation stands at 50th rank, with its passport allowing hassle-free entry to 119 nations.
“The recovery and reclamation of our travel freedoms, and our innate instinct to move and migrate, will take time,” Henley & Partners Chairman Christian Kaelin said in a statement.
China’s passport ranks 69th with access to 80 countries, and so does Bolivia’s. India is at 87th position with two other countries– Tajikistan and Mauritania. People holding passports from these countries can freely access only 60 countries.
For the 2022 ranking, Pakistan’s passport placed fourth last, ranking higher than Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but worse than North Korea, Nepal, Palestinian Territory, Somalia, and Yemen, ranking above it serially.
The Pakistan passport has a visa-free score of 32, five notch up 27 from that in Afghanistan. Five years ago, Asian countries hardly had any presence in the top 10 ranking of most-accepted passports, according to the index. Now, they are leading, overpassing Europe’s domination. Germany and Spain fall behind South Korea.
The rankings were based on the data available from the International Air Transport Association, which maintains the world’s largest database of travel information. The Henley & Partners Research Department’s continuing research also aided the data.