Singapore passport remains one of world's most powerful
The Singapore passport remains one of the most powerful in the world, tying for second place with South Korea's, in allowing trouble-free entry to 192 countries.
Japan's passport takes the top place, with easy entry into 193 countries at a time when global travel is picking up at pace after more than two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the latest update of a worldwide index compiled by global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley and Partners.
At the other end of the spectrum, Russian passport holders are increasingly cut off from the rest of the world as sanctions, travel bans, and airspace closures limit their access to all but a few destinations in Asia and the Middle East.
The Russian passport currently sits at 50th place on the index, giving easy access to 119 nations. China is placed 69th with access to 80 countries, while India's passport is ranked 87th.
The index has also shown a strong correlation between a nation's passport power and its peacefulness.
Nations in the top 10 of the Henley Passport Index can also be found in the top 10 of the Global Peace Index, a report produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Likewise, for the bottom-ranking nations.
Mr Stephen Klimczuk-Massion, a fellow at Oxford University's Said Business School and a member of Swiss non-profit Andan Foundation's advisory committee, said: "It is an understatement to say that we are living through a particularly turbulent time worldwide, with the pandemic still casting a long shadow and newer developments, such as war, inflation, political instability and incidents of violence, increasingly dominating the headlines...
"Now more than ever, it's a mistake to think of a passport as merely a travel document that allows you to get from A to B.
"The relative strength or weakness of a particular national passport directly affects the quality of life for the passport holder and may even be a matter of life and death in some circumstances."
The index, which uses 17 years of data, helps governments assess the value of citizenships around the world based on which passports offer the widest visa-free, or visa-on-arrival access.
Still, with global travel yet to fully recover from Covid-19 restrictions, the index offers only a notional snapshot of the best documents to hold as the world emerges from the pandemic.
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