Pakistan Hits Rock Bottom with Second Lowest Passport Rank

[Umair Malik]

Getting a visa for a country you are about to visit is always troublesome and always carries a risk of rejection with it.

A lot of visa requests are often rejected following terrorist attacks and similar incidents. But things are dire if you happen to possess a Pakistani passport.

Ever wondered how Pakistan’s passport ranks compared with other country’s passports in terms of allowing free entry into other countries? Here’s where the annual Passport Index rankings come in.

Passport Index 2016
The Passport Index ranks each country’s passports according to two major criteria:

The number of countries that allow you free entry onto their soil because of your country’s passport
And how welcoming a country is in allowing visa free entry.
This means that if you happen to have an American passport (ranked number 4 on the index) , you will be allowed to enter into 155 countries without a visa compared with Pakistan (ranked number 98 on the index) which allows visa free entry into just 27 countries.

Burundi (ranked highest) for example allows visa free entry to 198 countries, while Afghanistan (ranked lowest) does not let anyone enter their country without a visa.

About the Rankings
According to the passport index, the most valuable passports in terms of getting you visa free entry into other countries, are ranked below:

Germany and Sweden
France, Finland, Spain, Switzerland and United Kingdom
Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, South Korea and Norway
The countries mentioned together are tied for the same rank.

The 3 lowest ranking international passports are (with number 1 as the lowest):

Afghanistan
Pakistan
Iraq
These are ranked the lowest as these passports allow you visa free entry into the least amount of countries.

How Does the Pakistani Passport Compares with Other Countries?
In terms of getting into other countries, Pakistan ranks the closest with Afghanistan (98), Iraq (96) and Somalia (95)

Compared with neighboring countries, China and India’s passports are ranked at 78 and Iran’s passport is ranked at 93.

It is a sad state of affairs to see the Pakistani passport ranked so low. Those at the helm of affairs should also take note, but seeing how their elevated diplomatic status allows them to travel anywhere, we don’t reckon that the people’s representatives are all too keen on putting Pakistan on the world map in a positive way.

The reasons for the low value assigned to the Pakistani passport are multiple, with various social, political, cultural and geopolitical factors resulting in a cumulative negative ranking being metted to the document that we need to use for crossing from one country to another. Sadly, this state of affairs is bound to continue.

@ProPakistani