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The Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index (HVRI) is a global ranking of countries according to the travel freedom that their citizens enjoy. In collaboration with the International Air Transport Association, and based on official data from their global database, Henley & Partners has analyzed the visa regulations of all the countries and territories in the world since 2006.
Contents
Definition of the Index
The HVRI consists of a ranking of countries/ territories according to how many other countries/ territories one can travel to visa-free on a particular country/ territory's passport. The ranking is made according to the score each country achieves in terms of numbers of other countries to which visa-free access is possible. The basis of the data consists of all countries and territories covered in the IATA database. Since not all territories issue passports, there are far fewer countries/ territories to be ranked than destination countries/ territories against which queries are made.
To determine the score for each country/ territory, the IATA database is queried in the following way:
1. Each country/ territory for which the score is to be determined, is checked against every country/ territory for which travel restriction information exists in the IATA database.
2. Each query is made on the following conditions:
3. Further conditions include:
4. If no visa is required for passport holders from a country/ territory for which the score is to be determined to enter the destination under the above conditions, then a score (value = 1) is made for the passport holder's country/ territory
5. After all queries have been made, the total score for each country/ territory is equal to the number of destination countries/ territories for which the outcome is "no visa required" under the conditions defined above
2016 Results
Germany holds the top spot for 2016, with visa-free access to 177 countries out of a total of 219, while Sweden remained in second place with a ranking of 176. A larger group of countries sit in third place, with Finland, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom all having visa-free access to 175 countries.
Only 21 of the 199 countries listed on the HVRI remained in the same rank. No country dropped more than three positions. Four countries in particular made huge gains; Tonga rising 16 spots, Palau by 20, Colombia by 25 and Timor Leste, being the highest climber with an increase of 33 ranks.
Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan hold the bottom four positions on the HVRI, and thus have again been labelled the worst passports in the world.
The number of countries in the ‘Top 10’ remained static in this year’s Index at 28 countries, with Hungary joining the category after one year of being pushed out, and Malaysia dropping to 12th position after three years in the premier group.
2006–2015
European countries are notable for their stability over the past decade, and Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Sweden all remain in exactly the same position as 10 years before. The 'Top 10s' are almost identical, with 30 countries in 2015, compared to 26 a decade before. While Liechtenstein dropped, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Malta, Slovakia and South Korea all made it into the top 10.
Taiwan, Albania, the United Arab Emirates, Bosnia and Serbia all moved up more than 20 places in the Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index over the last 10 years, while the biggest drops were experienced by Guinea (−32), Liberia (−33), Sierra Leone (−35) and Bolivia (−37).