Which countries prevent their citizens from freely leaving?
 

I find myself curious today about which countries don't allow their citizens to freely obtain passports and freely leave the country for tourism or migration or whatever reason the citizen wants, if the citizen has his own means to buy a plane ticket or otherwise pay for transport.

North Korea and Cuba come to mind.

I honestly don't know about Russia and the other ex-Soviet states. Can any Russian who has the money get a passport and travel? what about Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, etc.

China? What about dictatorial African countries (yes, I'm talking about you, Eritrea)?

I've read that even in the Philippines, which si pretty "free", young women need a special exit permit to leave for foreign jobs, and without it, they aren't allowed on the plane out of the country. Maybe I heard that wrong.

Is there a wiki on this that I've missed?

Happens a lot in the Philippines when they think someone is going overseas to work without going through the government moneymaking scams prior to departure. Very common on flights leaving for the middle east where the traveller has a tourist visa, the automatic presumption is that they are going to find a job, particularly for women.

Nigeria. Every person who has wanted to attend my writers conference has been denied a visa.

Are you talking about Nigerians being denied an entry visa by other countries?

Or Nigerians being denied an "exit visa" by their own government? Can Nigerians not just cross the border into Benin, Cameroon, etc. whenever they want?

Some countries may require otherwise free citizens moving abroad from their country of citizenship to get a no objection approval to legally depart. Former UK colonies in Asia have had a history of this as did a former US colony in Asia.

Some countries may deny passports to otherwise free citizens for even civil debts, in some cases even private debts. Some former British colonies now in the GCC countries come to mind.

Some countries generally require their otherwise free citizens to have a passport in order to use common carriers to get out of the country. The US comes to mind as taking this approach, but so too do a variety of former British colonies.

It seems that many a country with any sort of exit controls does at least sometime prevent its own citizens from freely leaving. The exceptions are diminishing, in large part due to "security" and "cooperation".

I believe you're referring to an exit visa.

The initial post in this thread, as written, covers more than just exit visas.

Last I knew in China you had to have your employer's permission to get a passport. Normally it wouldn't be an issue, though--only if you had a sensitive job.

But that's a very helpful link thanks.

NZers may be denied permission to leave if they have large unpaid fines/student fee debt and have not previously made arrangements to pay them off by instalments.

There is, however, a substantive difference between requiring an exit visa and refusing to issue someone a passport. They are, in many cases, de facto the same, of course, but refusing to issue a passport just means that a country won't help that citizen gain admission to another country.

As far as I know, there's no legal requirement that a US citizen have a passport to board a flight to another country - the carrier won't generally transport the passenger, but that's because of concerns that he/she won't be admitted (and the carrier will face fines from the destination country).

The US has de jure and de facto demanded that common carrier airlines require passenger passports, NEXUS card, or passport replacing docs as a condition to transport recognized US citizens (and others) out of the US. This was done by the US under a US move referred to as the WHTI. If US carriers ignore WHTI when flying passengers out of the US, the carriers are subject to a penalty.

In other words, these restrictions are not merely a product of destination country rules, and this is something that is still evident with regard to air travel by US citizens who arrive in Canada and use a US state driving license and US state birth certificate to seek admission into Canada at a Canadian airport of entry.

Fair point, I had forgotten about WHTI. Still, that's only a partial limitation. It doesn't extend to trips outside of North/South America, the Caribbean, or Bermuda. You can still leave the country without a passport if you're flying to London or Singapore, for example. BA or SQ won't let you on the plane, most likely (due to the admission issue), but if you were flying private, you could probably pull it off.

The US's WHTI type of requirements (for listed travel documents) are applicable to all common carrier flights leaving the US, including flights departing the US for destinations beyond the Americas. WHTI was also implemented to eliminate the intra-Americas exception for common carrier flights when it comes to people not using the US's WHTI-compliant travel documents.

The US's WHTI and other US approaches to go after the providers of commercial air passenger transport services were done to restrict the ability of people to fly away freely from the US, no less so even when such US persons have treaty-level rights of admissibility at the destination.

Countries with mandatory military service prevent their citizens / conscripted residents from freely leaving, to varying extents.

At one end any sort of compulsion means that a citizen who does not wish to give their time and energy to their government is not truly free to leave until they have fulfilled the obligations imposed on them (usually by the actions of their parents). At another end, for example, Singapore only provides passports of short validity to boys aged 13-21 and also requires their parents to post a large sum of money if they wish their sons to leave the country, even for short trips.