Paynesville – In the wake of recent developments surrounding the Liberian passport, a video, which has accumulated over 9,000 views on social media, contains information about the rating of the Liberian Passport. This video has also been published on a Facebook page named Liberia Review and Report.
Fact Check Report By: Varney Kelvin Sirleaf | LVL Fact Checker
The Facebook page belongs to “a media company that reviews everything about Liberia and report daily, weekly and monthly”.
The video, which has also been shared over 300 times, list a number of countries that a Liberian passport holder has visa free entry or visa upon arrival status.
The video producers relied on data from the 2019 Henley Passport Index and claimed that Liberia is ranked 96th in terms of travel freedom with access to 47 countries and territories.
But LVL Fact Checking Desk found that the 2019 Henley Passport Index ranked Liberia 93rd and not 96th as claimed in the video. The Index also shows that the Liberian passport enjoys travel freedom to 48 travel destinations and not 47.
According to the Henley Passport Index, its Global Passport Index is based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association. It adds: “In order to create detailed visa lists for all 199 passports in our database, the Henley & Partners research team uses publicly available and reliable online sources to cross-check each passport against all 227 possible travel destinations”.
Meanwhile, the latest Henley Passport Index released in 2022 ranked the Liberian passport at 95th out of the 199 passports and has access to 49 visa free destinations.
Liberia’s visa free destinations in the 2022 Henley Passport Index includes Ecuador, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Barbados and a host of other nations that can be found by selecting Liberia in the “My Passport” section on the website.
Conclusion
Based on a careful analysis of the 2019 Henley Passport Index which was cited as reliance in the trending online video, we found that the Liberian passport in 2019 was ranked 93rd with access to 48 visa free destinations and not ranked 96th with 47 visa free access as claimed in the video.
Additionally, the 2022 Henley Passport Index, which is the latest data released by Henley and Partners, places the Liberian passport at 95th with access to 49 visa free destinations.
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