Based on exclusive data collected from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), consulting firm Henley & Partners ranked the Moroccan passport 73rd in the world, in its updated annual ranking “Henley Passport Index”, with access to 67 visa-free destinations.
The Henley Passport Index 2023, by British established Henley & Partners, compares visa-free access from 199 different passports to 227 travel destinations. According to this standard reference tool which measures the freedom to travel the world according to nationality and the number of countries accessible without a visa, the Moroccan passport is in the 73rd position in the world with a visa exemption score which amounts to 67 destinations, i.e. at the same level as Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.
Among these destinations are Turkey, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Republic of Haiti, Indonesia, South Korea, Maldives, Philippines, Ecuador, Colombia, Tunisia, Senegal, Guinea, Benin, Mali, Niger, Ivory Coast and Syria, among others.
At the level of Arab countries, it is the United Arab Emirates which dominates with a passport allowing citizens to travel to 179 destinations, thus ranking it 12th internationally. Qatar is far behind, in 52nd place with 103 visa-free destinations, followed by Kuwait (54th, 99 destinations), Bahrain (59th, 88 destinations), Oman (60th, 85 destinations), Saudi Arabia (61st, 83 destinations), Tunisia (70th, 71 destinations), Morocco (73rd, 67 destinations), then Algeria and Egypt which rank 83rd with access to 54 visa-free countries.
At the top of the world rankings, Singapore is now the most powerful passport in the world, allowing its citizens to have access to 192 visa-free destinations. Germany, Italy and Spain all climb to 2nd position with a score of 190 destinations, followed by Austria, Finland, France, Japan, Luxembourg, South Korea and Sweden, whose passport gives access to 189 different countries without a visa.
The UK, after a six-year decline, moves up two places to 4th, a position it last held in 2017. The US, on the other hand, has continued to slide down the rankings for a decade, falling two more places to 8th with access to just 184 visa-free destinations, tied with Lithuania and behind Canada and Greece which occupy 7th place with one more destination.
Afghanistan remains solidly at the bottom of the Henley Passport Index rankings, with a visa-free access score of just 27, followed by Iraq (29 destinations) and Syria (30 destinations), the three weakest passports in the world.
According to the consultancy, the general trend throughout the ranking’s 18-year history has been greater travel freedom, with the average number of visa-free destinations for travelers nearly doubling from 58 in 2006 to 109 in 2023. However, the overall mobility gap between the top and bottom of the rankings is now wider than ever, with top-ranked Singapore having access to 165 more visa-free destinations than Afghanistan.