In the 'open economies' category, the UAE has jumped 10 places over the past decade. Photo: AFP
In the 'open economies' category, the UAE has jumped 10 places over the past decade. Photo: AFP
In the 'open economies' category, the UAE has jumped 10 places over the past decade. Photo: AFP
In the 'open economies' category, the UAE has jumped 10 places over the past decade. Photo: AFP

UAE is the world's second safest country to visit, report shows


Gillian Duncan
  • English
  • Arabic

The UAE is the world’s second safest place to visit, beating countries including Singapore, the United States and popular European destinations.

That is according to Which? Travel, which ranked the world’s top 20 holiday destinations using data collated by the World Economic Fund, the World Risk Report, NHS Fit for Travel website and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) terrorism assessment risk to assess their overall safety.

Iceland topped the index, followed by the UAE, Singapore, Spain and Australia.

“Of the 20 holiday destinations that we looked at, Iceland, unsurprisingly, came out as the safest country,” said the Which? report, noting it for one of the world’s lowest murder rates.

“The UAE and Singapore were also considered extremely safe, with Spain the next safest of the six popular European holiday destinations that we looked at. Worst rated were South Africa, Turkey, Thailand, India and Mexico,” said Which?

The UAE is also the third least likely country on the index to suffer from a natural disaster, after Barbados and Iceland. Singapore and France rounded out the top five at least risk of natural disasters.

The most dangerous was Japan, with a natural disaster risk of 13.47 per cent.

The UAE is also low-risk for health concerns, as are the five European countries included in the index: Spain, France, Italy, Iceland and Greece, according to NHS Fit for Travel.

Terrorism cannot be ruled out in any country, according to the Which? data source, the FCO. Only Japan and Iceland are listed as unlikely to suffer from a terrorist attack. Terrorism is either "likely" or "very likely" in the other countries.

“It’s ‘very likely’ in Australia, Jordan, France, the US, India, Thailand and Turkey,” the Which? report said.

In the UAE, it is listed as 'likely'.

“Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners,” said the FCO website.

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Read more:

Abu Dhabi named safest city in the world for second year running

Abu Dhabi ranked safest city on the planet by Numbeo

Police 'at war' with drug traffickers after huge rise in narcotics seized in UAE

Five hundred drug raids in Dubai this year, police reveal

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The UAE’s position on the index is the latest endorsement of the country’s reputation for safety.

In September, it was announced that Abu Dhabi had been ranked the safest city in the world for the second year running, according to Numbeo, a website for crowdsourced global data.

Dubai was close behind in 11th place. The Numbeo index ranked 338 cities and is an estimation of overall safety levels in any given city or country. It also measures the cost of living, pollution, cost of travel and quality of life.

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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