Who Decides

The decision to grant or refuse Vanuatu citizenship under the investment-based programmes is made by the Citizenship Commission, a statutory body that sits within the framework of the Citizenship Act [CAP 112]. Nobody else in the chain — not the designated agent, not the due diligence firm, not the marketing intermediary who first answered your enquiry — has the power to approve an applicant.

That single sentence hides a longer chain of smaller decisions, each taken by someone different. This page is written for applicants and their advisers who want to know, stage by stage, which body forms a view on their file, what that view covers, and what it does not. It deliberately stays on the question of "who"; the order of the steps themselves is set out on the statutory stages page.

Who Has the Final Say on a Vanuatu Citizenship Application?

The Citizenship Commission is the decision-maker. It considers files that reach it through the Citizenship Office and decides whether the applicant, and any dependants included in the application, should be granted Vanuatu citizenship. Its decision covers everyone included in the file, and nobody below the Commission can treat the main applicant or a family member as "already approved".

Who sits on the Commission is a matter of appointment and changes over time. We do not list individual members here, because any list would date quickly and because applicants have no channel to approach members directly. Contact with the Commission runs through the Citizenship Office, and contact with the Citizenship Office runs through your designated agent.

What the Commission decides is citizenship. It does not decide visas for other countries, it does not decide your tax position anywhere, and it is not the authority that physically prints the passport.

The Decision Chain, Stage by Stage

The table below separates the bodies that touch a file from the bodies that actually decide something about it. Several actors on the list form a view without having any power to grant or refuse.

Stage	Who acts	What they decide	What they cannot decide
Engagement	Licensed designated agent	Whether to accept you as a client and lodge a file at all	Whether you will be approved
Background checks	Due diligence provider(s) engaged under the programme	What their report says about your history and source of funds	Approval or refusal; they report, they do not rule
Intake and completeness	Citizenship Office	Whether the file is complete enough to go forward, and what further documents are requested	The grant of citizenship
Decision	Citizenship Commission	Grant or refusal for the applicant and dependants	Visas, tax treatment, matters outside Vanuatu
After approval	Citizenship Office, with the applicant's agent	Payment instructions and arrangements for the certificate of citizenship	Any change to the Commission's decision
Passport	Department of Immigration and Passport Services	Issue of the travel document to a person who is a citizen	Citizenship itself

What Does the Designated Agent Actually Decide?

A designated agent is a licensed intermediary and the only route through which an application can be lodged. The agent's one real decision is a gatekeeping one: whether to take you on. A careful agent will decline a file if the applicant's history, source of funds or documents make a refusal likely, because a weak file reflects on the agent's own licence.

Beyond that gate, the agent decides nothing about the outcome. Any agent, sub-agent or website that describes approval as "guaranteed" is describing something it has no power over. The agent's duties in the procedure are covered in more detail on the page about what agents are required to do; how agents are licensed in the first place is a separate question for the page on authorized agents.

Do Due Diligence Firms or Financial Bodies Decide Anything?

Due diligence is a fixed cost of the process — US$5,000 under the current fee position — and it pays for investigation, not for a verdict. The firms that carry out background checks look at identity, criminal and civil records, adverse media and the origin of the money that will fund the contribution. Their output is a report. The Commission reads that report alongside the rest of the file and draws its own conclusions.

Vanuatu's wider anti-money laundering system also sits in the background of every application, and the Financial Intelligence Unit page explains where that institution fits. For the purpose of "who decides", the point is simple: financial-crime checks inform the decision-maker; they do not replace it.

Which Decisions Are Made Outside Vanuatu?

A frequent misunderstanding is that a grant of Vanuatu citizenship settles questions that are in fact decided by other governments. Three are worth naming:

• Visas for the Schengen area. Since 3 February 2025 Vanuatu nationals have needed a Schengen visa on a permanent basis under Regulation (EU) 2025/11. Whether a particular Vanuatu passport holder gets one is decided by the consulate of the Schengen state concerned, not by anyone in Port Vila.
• Visas for the United Kingdom. The UK has required visas from Vanuatu nationals since 19 July 2023. Entry decisions are made by UK authorities.
• Your existing citizenship. Vanuatu permits dual citizenship, but whether you may keep your current nationality after acquiring another is decided by the law of the country whose citizen you already are.

Approximately 88 destinations accept Vanuatu passport holders without a visa or with a visa on arrival, but each of those arrangements is a decision of the destination country and can change without any action by Vanuatu.

Changing a Decision After It Is Made

A refusal is a decision of the Commission, and any reconsideration has to come from the same body. There is no private or commercial route around it: an agent cannot "re-file with a different officer", and payment of additional fees does not reopen a refused file. What options exist after a refusal, and what is realistic, are discussed on the decision and appeal page.

A grant can also be affected after the fact. Citizenship obtained on the basis of false or concealed information can be exposed to revocation under the Citizenship Act, which is one more reason the accuracy of the original file matters more than its speed.

How to Use This When Choosing an Adviser

Knowing who decides makes it easier to judge what you are being told. A short checklist:

1. Ask the agent to confirm in writing that it is a licensed designated agent and that it, not a third party, will lodge the file.
2. Treat any statement about the outcome as an opinion, not a commitment.
3. Expect requests for further documents to come from the Citizenship Office via your agent; they are not a sign of refusal.
4. Remember that the contribution — from US$130,000 for a single applicant, US$150,000 for a couple, US$165,000 for a family of three and US$180,000 for a family of four under the Development Support Program — is paid only after approval, in US dollars, to the account named in the official instructions. Cryptocurrency is not accepted.
5. Keep the question of travel access separate from the citizenship decision, because they are made by different governments.