Dubai: A German passport is the strongest and Afghanistan passport is the weakest in ranking of world's passports by a global advisory firm.
The latest passport Index is based on cross-border access of national passports. It assigns a "visa-free score" according to the number of countries a passport holder can visit visa-free or with visa on arrival.
The index was released by passportindex.org and saw Germany take first place with a visa-free score of 158, closely followed by Singapore and Sweden which were both ranked second with a visa-free score of 157.
Qatar stood 52 with a score of 77. Regionally, the United Arab Emirates was the leading Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) country with a score of 122 (rank 28).
The other top most powerful passports in the world included Denmark, Finland, France, Spain, Norway, UK and the United States (all scored 156).
The last five places were taken by Afghnaistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia.
Marshall Islands saw the biggest change in the last year, adding 35 countries to its visa-free score. Palau and Micronesia followed with 34 additional countries, while Solomon Islands and Tuvalu added 33.
The index also added a new World Openness Score which tracks the progression of freedom of mobility across the globe. The world openness score rose to 17,948 in the first few days of 2017 from 17,925 in 2016.
"This trend shows opening of borders but will it continue? With the recent backlash against globalisation and ongoing immigration issues, the World Openness Score may be in danger of decline," the report added.
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