Kuwaiti passport ranking improves
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KUWAIT CITY, Aug 22: Kuwaiti passport has achieved a tangible gain in the 2020 edition of the Passport Index, advancing to the 33rd place among its global counterparts from a rank of 39 in the year 2019, and thus becoming the second in the Gulf and the Arab world in terms of its strength in opening horizons of international travel for its holders, reports Al-Rai gaily.
The gain achieved by the Kuwaiti passport comes as a result of improvement it has made on the criterion of “freedom of movement points”. It is the criterion that indicates the number of countries a Kuwaiti citizen can travel to without the need to obtain a visa or with the option of obtaining it on arrival at the airports and other ports of those countries.
The decline in passport points for some other countries from the previous year’s ranking also played a secondary role in that progress. The Kuwaiti passport received 68 points on the “freedom of movement points” scale, which is because of the fact that it allows holders of Kuwaiti passports to travel to 33 countries without obtaining a visa in advance, 35 countries where visa can be obtained on arrival, and 130 countries with prior visa.
This leap in ranking has placed the Kuwaiti passport in second place among the Gulf and Arab countries along with the Qatari passport, after their Emirati counterpart which came in 13th place globally.
After the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, the order of the rest of the Arab countries came in different rankings, and sometimes diverging. They are as follows: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the Sultanate of Oman, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Mauritania, Egypt, Comoros, Djibouti, Sudan, Lebanon, Libya , Palestinian territories, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and Iraq.
It is worth mentioning that the Passport Index is prepared and released annually by the Canadian Arton Capital Foundation, which specializes in citizenship services, and counseling and immigration programs worldwide.
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