Travel risk map 2020 reveals world's most dangerous countries

International SOS, a global travel safety expert, has created an interactive map that ranks countries’ safety according to three different categories: medical, security and road safety.

Countries are colour-coded with risk ranging from insignificant (green), low (yellow), medium (orange), high (red) to the extreme (burgundy) in the first two categories.

Libya, Somalia, South Sudan and the Central African Republic are the world’s most dangerous countries according to the map with each of these scoring the worst in each category. (‘Very high’ for travel medical risk; ‘extreme’ for travel security risk; and more than 25 deaths per 100,000 for road safety risk).

Countries graded ‘extreme’ for security risk include Mali, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan.

South Africa scored well on the medical rating and is colour-coded as green (insignificant risk), while it was colour coded as orange (medium risk) when it comes to security. Road safety is rated out of four based on the mortality rate per 100,000 people. South Africa fared poorly with more than 25 mortalities per 100,000 people.

Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Andorra, Slovenia, and Svalbard all received the highest safety rating across all three criteria.

Most of the rest of Europe, the UK and USA had the lowest risk rating in the medical and road safety categories, however, there was a slightly elevated risk in the security category (low risk rather than insignificant).