Vanuatu document photos online

For most of the 20th century, the islands now called Vanuatu were the New Hebrides — the only place on Earth jointly ruled by two colonial powers at once. Under the Anglo-French Condominium, Britain and France ran two of everything: two police forces, two health systems, two school networks, two prison systems and two separate currencies, with residents able to choose which nationality's law to live under. Locals nicknamed it the "Pandemonium." Only when the country won independence on 30 July 1980 did a single passport, a single court and, soon after, a single currency finally replace the doubled-up paperwork.

• Passport power Vanuatu was one of the biggest fallers on the 2025 Henley Passport Index, sliding six places to 54th as its visa-free reach shrank to around 90 destinations.
• Travel access In December 2024 the EU stripped Vanuatu passport holders of visa-free entry to the Schengen Area entirely, citing weak background checks in its citizenship-by-investment scheme.
• Citizenship Vanuatu runs one of the world's fastest 'golden passport' programs, historically granting citizenship in as little as one to two months — a speed that triggered Europe's crackdown.
• Dual identity Under colonial rule a New Hebridean could pick whether to be governed by British or French law, switching the legal identity attached to their documents almost at will.
• Currency Vanuatu's money, the vatu, is one of the world's only currencies with no subdivisions at all — there are no cents, and its name was borrowed from an indigenous word for 'stone'.
• Money history Until 1981 two currencies circulated side by side on the islands — the Australian dollar and the New Hebrides franc — before the vatu replaced the franc at par.
• Languages With roughly 138 indigenous languages among fewer than 340,000 people, Vanuatu has the highest density of languages per capita of any country on Earth.
• Original bungee Bungee jumping was inspired by Pentecost Island's centuries-old land-diving ritual, in which men leap from wooden towers with only forest vines tied to their ankles.
• National motto Vanuatu's official motto, stamped on its emblem, is in Bislama — 'Long God yumi stanap' ('In God we stand') — making it one of few nations with a pidgin-language motto.