The world's most powerful passports for 2022
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There's a widening gap between the global north and the global south when it comes to travel freedoms, says the first 2022 report by London-based global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley & Partners.
The firm's Henley Passport Index, based on exclusive data provided by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), has been regularly monitoring the world's most travel-friendly passports since 2006.
It says that increasing travel barriers that have been introduced over the course of the Covid pandemic have resulted in the widest global mobility gap in the index's 16-year history.
The index doesn't take temporary restrictions into account, so leaving actual current travel access aside, holders of the passports at the top of its ranking -- Japan and Singapore -- are able, in theory, to travel visa-free to 192 destinations.
That's 166 more destinations than Afghan nationals, who sit at the bottom of the index of 199 passports, and can access just 26 countries without requiring a visa in advance.
