2 Asian passports are the world's most powerful and can travel to 192 countries

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Oct. 12, 2021

2 Asian passports are the world's most powerful and can travel to 192 countries

Global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley & Partners has released the latest update to its live-tracking passport index, which ranks the strength of the world's passports based on how many destinations they can travel to without a visa – with data provided by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

As of the beginning of Q4 2021, Singapore and Japan share the top spot as having the world's most powerful passports, with passport holders from both countries allowed to travel visa-free to 192 destinations.

Not so crowded at the top.

The index, which is updated every quarter, previously listed the Singapore passport as the second-most powerful in the world back in April 2021, with Japan taking the top spot at the time.

Now that the two countries are sharing the #1 ranking, it seems rather convenient that countries across the world are slowly rolling out their reopening plans, as the world learns to deal with COVID-19 as endemic.

Rounding out the top 10 most powerful passports in the world are Germany and South Korea (190 destinations), Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, and Spain (189), Austria and Denmark (188), France, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden (187), Belgium, New Zealand, and Switzerland (186), the Czech Republic, Greece, Malta, Norway, the UK, and the U.S. (185), Australia and Canada (184), Hungary (183), and finally Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia (182).

The strongest Southeast Asian passport to follow Singapore is Malaysia (ranked at #13) with 179 visa-free destinations. The rest of the region included on the index are Brunei (166 destinations), Thailand (79), Indonesia (71), the Philippines (65), Cambodia (53), and Myanmar (46).

The least powerful passports are sadly unsurprising, to say the least.

To make it into this unfortunate club means that passport holders from the following countries can only travel to less than 40 countries, visa-free.

The bottom eight on the index include North Korea (39 destinations), Nepal and Palestine (37), Somalia (34), Yemen (33), Pakistan (31), Syria (29), Iraq (28), and Afghanistan (26).

A gap that keeps getting wider.

Stringent border closures and other travel restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have unfortunately resulted with the widest mobility freedom gap in the passport index's 16-year history.

Looking at the rankings, the gap truly is staggering. While the most powerful passports (Singapore and Japan) can travel to 192 destinations, the least powerful in the world (Afghanistan, ranked at 116) can only travel to 26 destinations. That's a 166-destination difference between the best and worst passports.

According to Henley & Partners, the 'global north' – developed nations in the northern hemisphere – have made it increasingly difficult for 'global south' travelers to cross into their borders, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The global north has been enforcing aggressive migration containment strategies for some time now through the rigid application of border controls, undermining the movement of persons in various ways," says Mehari Taddele Maru, a fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies.

"COVID-19-associated travel restrictions are new additions to the toolbox of migration containment instruments employed by the global north to curb mobility from the global south."

With these seemingly disproportionate restrictions solely based on geography, experts think change needs to be made in order to properly restart the global economy, getting rid of outdated entry requirements.

"If we want to restart the global economy, it is critical that developed nations encourage inward migration flows, as opposed to persisting with outmoded restrictions," says Christian H. Kaelin, chair of Henley & Partners and creator of the passport index concept.