Born Unequal: Passport Privilege And Freedom Of Movement

In 2022, Ferdinand Omanyala, 26 — also known as Africa’s fastest man — secured his U.S. visa a mere 24 hours before the start of his race at the World Athletics Championship in Eugene, Oregon. This given story sparked the kind of international debate that brought passport inequality out of the shadows where it resided and straight onto our doorstep. But Omanyala’s story is no singular story. It is also the story of South African runners stranded in Italy because of visa problems while travelling from Cape Town to Oregon. It is the story of Nigerian athletes having to pull out of competitions at the last minute due to visa problems. It is the story of every other African facing difficulties and slower timelines in their visa processes. This story, that of holding a passport that is a right for all but a privilege for some, is one we ought to tell.

Access to a passport is endowed to each of us upon birth by virtue of citizenship to a given country but no two passports are made equal. According to the Henley Passport Index, which includes 199 passports and 227 travel destinations, Japanese citizens have the strongest passport with visa-free access to 193 countries or territories in the world. German and Spanish citizens have visa-free access to 191 countries, Colombian citizens have visa-free access to 133 countries, Jamaican citizens have visa-free access to 86 countries, while Algerian and Cameroonian citizens have visa-free access to 52 countries. A quick glance at the Henley 2023 Global Passport Ranking reveals the relative strength of the passports of the Global North and the relative weakness of those of the Global South. It is flagrant in the graph below which highlights the 50 strongest and 50 weakest passports in the world.

The geographic division of passport strength is as real as it is unequal. In an increasingly globalized world, the strength of one’s passport is directly correlated to access to employment, economic opportinuty, and travel freedom. But when that same world’s bureaucracy and politics are stained by racist practices, passports inevitably become a tool of racist discrimnation. This inequality transpires in the lived experiences of holders of weaker passports — predominantly Black and Brown people — who are generally subjected to longer visa application processes, higher visa rejection rates, distant consular appointments, and significant visa application fees.

This case is well made when we look closer at the data. According to the UK Visas and Immigration division, the UK rejected 12% of all visa applications from September 2016 to September 2018. When the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Africa broke the data down further, it found that African applicants made up 27% of those 12%, in comparison to their Asian and North American counterparts who stood at 11% and 4% respectively. Home Office data from July 2019 further shows that African applicants are “over twice as likely to be refused a UK visa than applicants from any other part of the world.” Comparatively, according to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, the average wait time for a U.S. visitor visa in Nairobi is 687 days which is more than 3.5 times the average wait time for a U.S. visitor visa in London. It seems that that the situation of Africans is exacerbated not only by their nationality but also by their geographic location — making being a passport holder a double burden when you are an African applying from an African country.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) may affirm that we are all born free and equal in dignity and rights, and its Article 13 may assert everyone’s right to freedom of movement but, in practice, passports play an active role in perpetuating oppressive hierarchies in the global system. Where there is inequality, there is privilege — and passport holders of the Global South are not afforded the privilege of travel free of the racial profiling and intrusive interrogation that is their counterparts from the Global North have easy access to.

Let us be reminded that when developing countries become places people travel to with ease and travel from with difficulty, we need not look any further to know that we have impeded on their citizens’ human rights— which is no condition in which we belong.