| Azlan Othman |
BRUNEI Darussalam has improved its position in the 2017 Henley & Partners – Kochenov Quality of Nationality Index (QNI), which ranks the quality of nationalities worldwide.
The sultanate scored 47.6 per cent, 0.3 per cent more than in the previous year, placing the nation at 45th place globally out of 168 countries and third in Southeast Asia after Singapore and Malaysia.
“The Henley & Partners QNI provides a comprehensive ranking of the quality of nationalities worldwide. To ensure a high level of reliability, a wide variety of strictly quantifiable data is used to gauge the opportunities and limitations that our nationalities impose on us,” the publishers of the report said.
“For that purpose, the QNI measures both the internal value of nationality, which refers to the quality of life and opportunities for personal growth within the country of origin and the external value of nationality, which identifies the diversity and quality of opportunities that the nationality allows persons to pursue outside their country of origin,” they added.
Nationality in the majority of circumstances is described by QNI as playing “an important role in establishing a highly irrational ceiling for our opportunities and aspirations, reflecting the core aspect of being a national of some place, which is a random consequence of birth boasting no correlation with a person’s achievements, ideas, feelings, and desires”.
France has been named the overall winner with an index score of 81.7 per cent out of a possible 100 per cent, fractionally ahead of Germany which was knocked off the top spot for the first time in seven years, with a score of 81.6 per cent.
Iceland and Denmark take third and fourth place, respectively, on this year’s Index, which is the only one of its kind that objectively measures and ranks all the world’s nationalities as legal statuses through which to develop talents and business.
Created by Dr Christian H Kälin and Prof Dr Dimitry Kochenov, the QNI considers two factors when determining a nationalities score, external and internal factors. The index looks as how successful a country is in terms of human development, economic prosperity, and peace and stability and compares these to the external factors, the weight of travel and settlement freedom and the diversity of settlement and travel freedom.
There are 26 nationalities in total that are deemed “extremely high quality tier” with a score of 75 per cent and over. Those with a score between 50 per cent and 74.99 per cent are classified as ‘very high tier’.
There are 50 nationalities in the ‘high quality tier’ category, with a score between 35 per cent and 49.99 per cent, of which Brunei Darussalam is included.
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