New Zealand passport holds value as Covid-19 warps power rankings

The New Zealand Passport is one of the few passports unaffected by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Photo / Getty Images

The compilers of an annual passport power index have warned that Omicron and Covid-19 variants are driving a wedge between the top and bottom most mobile nationalities.

This year's Henley Passport Index shows "record-breaking" levels of freedom for top passports Japan and Singapore, which provide holders visa free access to 192 countries.

Meanwhile the lowest ranked passport, Afghanistan is recognised by just 26 countries for automatic entry.

This represents the largest gap in mobility since the passport power rankings was first compiled 17 years ago.

According to Henley, this trend has only been exacerbated by travel restrictions along economic divisions in the wake of new Covid-19 variants.

"This deepening divide in international mobility between wealthier countries and poorer ones was brought into sharp focus late last year with the arrival of the highly infectious Omicron variant," said Henley & Partners.

With many central sub-Saharan African countries being placed on no-entry lists from the OECD in December, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres compared the African-centric restrictions to a "Travel Apartheid".

Henley and Partners says the handling of Covid-19 has affected all passports. Though not all passports have been harmed by the pandemic.

The UK and US passports, which had softened in the rankings to a low of 8th place in the 2020 rankings, have regained some power.

Following disruptive travel policy events such as Brexit, both passports have regained post-pandemic position of 6th - joint with the New Zealand passport.

For a second year New Zealand has held on to its ranking of sixth most powerful, granting access to 186 countries, visa-free.

Vaccine passport power

The Index was compiled using data from the International Air Transport Association, looks at the number of countries a passport entitles a holder to travel to.

However, the index ranking does not take into account the practicalities and ease of travel. With managed isolation and a decrease in the number of air links open to travellers, even holders of top-ranking passports may find travel more difficult in a post-pandemic world.

IATA, whose vaccine passes have been adopted by airlines such as Air New Zealand, predicts that having the right passport may no longer be enough to guarantee access to certain destinations.

Nick Careen, senior VP for IATA's Operations, Safety and Security expects the sharing of more passenger data and medical information to be a trend that will continue long after the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Our recent survey found that 73 per cent of passengers are willing to share their biometric data to improve airport processes (up from 46 per cent in 2019), and 88% per cent will share immigration information prior to departure for expedited processing," he said.

"Passports and visas are among the most important instruments impacting on social inequality worldwide as they determine opportunities for global mobility," says Christian Kaelin, chairman of Henley & Partners.

While our nationality and travel documents are "no less arbitrary than our skin colour," Kaelin says that post-pandemic recovery will be slowed by ongoing travel restrictions and blocked routes for migration.

Passport power rankings 2022

Rank	Country	Visa-free access
1	Japan	192
	Singapore
	Germany
2	South Korea	190
3	Finland	189
	Italy
	Luxembourg
	Spain
4	Austria	188
	Denmark
	France
	Netherlands
	Sweden
5	Ireland	187
	Portugal
6	Belgium	186
	New Zealand
	Norway
	Switzerland
	United Kingdom
	United States
7	Australia	185
	Canada
	Czech Republic
	Greece
	Malta
8	Hungary	183
	Poland
9	Lithuania	182
	Slovakia
10	Estonia	181
	Latvia
	Slovenia

Source: Henley & Partners