When you’re getting ready to take a trip to an unfamiliar location abroad, one of the questions you may have is whether the area is safe. Medical and security experts International SOS and Control Risks have released an interactive Travel Risk Map for 2019, which highlights the most dangerous countries in the world.
Armed with this knowledge, business and pleasure travellers can determine their strategy when visiting certain foreign countries.
The map estimates risk using a variety of factors, including road safety, security, and medical issues. Countries are colour coded to indicate their risk rating, which can be as low as “minimal” or as high as “extreme.”
Unsurprisingly, the countries that have the highest security risks for travellers are Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Mali, Yemen, South Sudan, and Syria.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are Norway, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, and Iceland. They have such low-security risks that they are some of the safest places to visit, reports Travel Pulse.
The map offers specific information for individual countries by zeroing in on areas that are higher risk than others. For example, Mexico, India, and Colombia have both high risk and medium risk areas.
Popular vacation spots in the Caribbean, Mexico, and India are rated high risk to safety. However, Aruba, a Dutch-owned Caribbean island, is considered the least risky country in the world.
Travellers wishing to avoid medical problems may want to stay clear of African countries such as South Sudan, Niger, Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone, or Iraq, Venezuela, and Lebanon, which have a higher risk of spreading disease and causing other medical issues. Other high-risk countries in relation to health include Venezuela and North Korea.
Brazil, China, and Russia have a “variable risk” of disease, while visitors to Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Japan have a low risk of contracting a disease.
Many experts believe that travel risks will increase over the next year. Forty-three percent of business travellers expect travel risks to increase next year, according to the Ipsos MORI “Business Resilience Trends Watch 2019.”
