Pakistani, Somalia, Iraq & Afghanistan Passports Worst For International Travel

When looking to travel abroad, your primary travel document — the passport — can sometimes help you narrow your choices given which countries are easily accessible to you, or hidden behind a visa requirement. If, per chance, you have a Pakistani passport, you are in for filling visa forms for most destinations around the world given how the green passport ranks as the third worst passport for travel freedom.

Henley & Partners, a company that assists wealthy clients with residence and citizenship planning and the company behind the Visa Restrictions Index, has ranked countries according to the number of other countries their citizens can travel to without having to obtain a visa.

Pakistan shares the spot with Somalia, with citizens of both countries enjoying visa-free access to only 32 destinations around the world. Only citizens of Iraq (31) and Afghanistan (28) are worse off.

Ranked number one, citizens of Finland, Germany, Sweden, the US and the UK, all have visa-free access to 174 destinations across the globe, followed by Canada and Denmark in second spot with visa-free access to 173 countries.

“Visa requirements are an expression of the relationships between individual nations,” the company’s websites notes, and, “generally reflect the relations and status of a country within the international community of nations.”

There are 219 countries or territories on the list ranked into 94 positions, with countries often sharing positions. The maximum attainable score is 218.

The index is produced in cooperation with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which maintains the world’s largest database of travel information.