Ireland and the Republic of Suriname - some unhappy history?

Eliot Rosewater · 23-05-2014 2:37am #1

Every year the consulting firm Henley and Partners produces a report outlining which passports are "best" for international travel; i.e., which passports allow access to the most number of countries visa free (or visa on arrival). The top countries are, unsurprisingly, mostly in North America and Western Europe. The number one rank is shared between Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, each of whose citizens can enter 173 other countries visa free. Ireland comes joint 11th, with visa free access to 170 other countries.

On reading this I was interested in discovering which countries British citizens could enter visa free but Irish citizens couldn't (and if it worked the other way around). Questions like this can be answered reasonably easily using Wikipedia (assuming the data is correct!) as many countries have both a page describing where their nationals can travel to visa free and which nationals of other countries can arrive visa free. Comparing the associated maps for the UK and Ireland shows that Irish citizens can enter the UK and 169 other countries without a visa, and that UK citizens can enter Ireland and the same 169 countries without a visa, but plus 3 others.

Naura, a tiny island nation in the pacific, gives this preference to the UK because of a general Commonwealth of Nations policy. The visa policy of Rwanda lacks such a simple explanation, but looking at the map it's clear that Ireland isn't specifically left out. The same can't be said for the third country, the Republic of Suriname in South America. In fact, Ireland is essentially the only Western European country to not have this benefit.

Investigating this more led to the Department of Foriegn Affairs website for Suriname, which explicitly states "We do not have diplomatic relations with this country". This is more than just saying that there's no embassy there; for example, Ireland doesn't have an embassy in Jordan, but provides consular services out of the embassy in Cairo, and has an honoury consul in Amann, Mr. Ramsey George Khoury (who I would guess from a Google search is not actually Irish). Further, the British website for Suriname show that the UK doesn't have an embassy there either, but operates consular services out of neighbouring Guyana.

All-in-all, this seems at face value to be a puzzling international relationship. Does anyone have any thoughts or insight?

endacl · 23-05-2014 2:48am

Suriname is tiny, with a population of around half a million. Not a lot of spare cash for diplomatic staff and infrastructure, I'd imagine. As a former Dutch colony, although there are no formal relations, we are represented in Suriname through our embassy in The Hague.

The Diabolical Monocle · 24-05-2014 1:53am

They dont like Andorra either by the looks of it, from the map, we should form a no-Surinames club with Andorra.

Sunglasses Ron · 24-05-2014 6:26am

Only reason I can fathom would be possibly to do with this incident on the soil of their old colonial master

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Spanos_and_Stephen_Melrose

I would assume that with Guyana being a former British colony that the Brits might still do occasional jungle warfare type exercises there (they do climate/ landscape specific training in friendly former colonies such as Canada, Kenya and Belize to name a few) and maybe the Surinamese have some sort of aversion to what Irish citizens may intend to do in their territory to forces over the border (let's be honest, Suriname is well off both the South American backpacker trail and the Caribbean holiday track, I would be surprised if the amount of Irish people who visit yearly is over a score if even that.)

It's a very oblique reason but it is the only reason I can think of for their entry scrutiny on us compared to most EU states (as for why they have zero diplomatic relations with us, as said it is likely mutual. So few Irish people end up in that corner of the world that the event for needing diplomatic assistance is extremely unlikely)

randy hickey · 25-05-2014 1:34am

Obviously it'd be too much of a headache to open up diplomatic relations with them.

After all, Suriname is an anagram of aneurism.

Hotblack Desiato · 25-05-2014 12:50pm

Rwanda is a commonwealth member, so that explains that (one of the very few members not to have been a British colony.)

The_Captain · 26-05-2014 10:41am

When I was in Rwanda, US and British passports got in visa free, Irish passports didn't

dm09 · 28-05-2014 12:45am

The_Captain wrote: »

When I was in Rwanda, US and British passports got in visa free, Irish passports didn't

Wondered the same when I was there, makes sense when you mentioned the commonwealth connection but Irish passport holders can get a visa on arrival in Rwanda (pre-approved before entry)
Funny enough when I was in Bangladesh the guy in front of me in the cue was British was charged for Visa on arrival but when they saw I had an Irish passport they waived the charge !

Muahahaha · 29-05-2014 2:39pm

When I showed up at the Colombian border from Venezualea I got sent back to get a visa, I had to wait five days for the honory consel to ink his stamp. That was because of those three IRA guys at the time who got caught 'bird watching' in Colombia. I think it's changed back now since they did a runner but back in 2004 those three fcukers cost me nearly a week of sitting around a place I'd already been:(

Seaneh · 30-05-2014 4:58pm

Muahahaha wrote: »

When I showed up at the Colombian border from Venezualea I got sent back to get a visa, I had to wait five days for the honory consel to ink his stamp. That was because of those three IRA guys at the time who got caught 'bird watching' in Colombia. I think it's changed back now since they did a runner but back in 2004 those three fcukers cost me nearly a week of sitting around a place I'd already been:(

Crossing from Venezuela into Colombia is never straight forward. The countries have extremely bad relations.

Ireland and the Republic of Suriname - some unhappy history?

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