Islamabad: Pakistan’s passport has been ranked as the fourth weakest in the world in the latest Henley Passport Index with only Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan placed below. Among 199 different passports assessed by the firm, Pakistan’s passport stood at the 101st spot in the world.
As per the latest rankings, people of Pakistan can have visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry at only 29 destinations. The UK-based citizenship and residence advisory company compares 199 different passports across 227 different travel destinations, and assesses the score on the basis of the number of places that can be visited without a prior visa, or with a visa on arrival.
The three countries with weaker passports than Pakistan are Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. As per the Henley Index, Pakistani citizens can have visa-free entry in Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Vanuatu, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Haiti, Cook Islands, Rwanda, Micronesia, Montserrat and The Gambia, leading Pakistani network Geo News reported.
Pakistani citizens have visa-on-arrival facility in Mozambique, Cambodia, Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau, Burundi, Senegal, Comoro Islands, Djibouti, Maldives, Sierra Leone, Nepal, Niue, Palau Islands, Samoa, Timor-Leste, and Tuvalu. Furthermore, Pakistani visa holders can have electronic travel authorisations for Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Kenya.
Last November, it was reported that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had stopped issuing visas to Pakistani citizens.
Pakistan’s Additional Interior Secretary Salman Chaudhry disclosed the development during a meeting of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights.
“If a ban is imposed, getting it removed would be difficult,” leading Pakistani daily Dawn quoted Chaudhry as saying during the meeting.
According to the official, the UAE was issuing visas only to holders of blue and diplomatic passports.
Speaking to Dawn, Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri, chair of the Senate committee on human rights, had also confirmed the Interior Ministry official’s remarks.
She stated that the restriction stems from concerns that Pakistani travellers were “getting involved in criminal activities” after reaching the UAE.
According to Zehri, the committee was briefed that the UAE had issued no visas to Pakistanis, with only a handful granted recently “after much difficulty”.
Pakistani citizens have been facing visa rejections in several Gulf countries, prompting the government to raise the issue with respective counterparts during key meetings.
In December 2024, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf countries imposed an indefinite ban on granting visas to people from at least 30 different cities of Pakistan, following an alarming rise in the number of cases where Pakistani nationals were caught begging or being involved in smuggling, drug trafficking, human trafficking and other criminal offences abroad.
(IANS)
