Is It Safe to Travel to Egypt?

You have arrived here because you’ve been planning to go to Egypt or just curious to see the country’s safety. Now let’s go over some statistics. According to Global Peace Index 2017, Egypt is been ranked 139th out of 163 countries with a score of 2.583. It doesn’t seem to be promising rank nor the score. The capital city of Egypt – Cairo is surprisingly very unsafe and rated high risk by GeoSafeScores™ – A location safety score developed by GeoSure Global.

Egypt’s crime rate is considered to be moderate. But expats are been advised to take sensible precautions with their personal security and possessions. Petty crimes remain a concern while violent crimes have become worsened over time due to the high level of unemployment and poverty. The threat is considerably more in busy and crowded streets frequented by the foreigners. Sexual harassments to women have generated debates in the society. Verbal harassments and at times, physical harassments by the large group of men still prevails in the country.

Egypt was witnessing an increase in its crime rates from 2011 to 2014. In 2016 however, the crime rates are better when comparing to the previous year which is 2015. This was due to the increase in the visibility of the police which made this decrease in crime rates. Incidents like snatching women’s bag from motorbikes, sometimes end up injuring them are reported. There were some infrequent but several cases where guns are been used in course of the robbery. Several women reported about snatching their purses by the drivers while they enter into taxis. Carjacking also prevails in the cities; some with an intention to extract ransom.

GeoSafeScores™ reflect the above factors and other analysis of hundreds of variables specific to each neighborhood, city, towns etc. Producing standardized, customized safety “temperatures” that can easily be compared by location and over time.

Egypt is divided into twenty-seven governorates and each governorate has a population density of more than one thousand per km2. Here is the list of top 10  Governorates in terms of population:

1. Cairo
2. Giza
3. Sharqia
4. Dakahlia
5. Beheira
6. Minya
7. Qalyubia
8. Alexandria
9. Gharbia
10. Sohag

From this list, major crimes happen in Cairo, Governorate of Egypt which is highly populated.

The country has highest occurrences of road accidents in the world. Especially, busy streets of Cairo where drivers neglect the traffic rules and most of the traffic lights in Cairo do not function instead police manages the traffic in main intersections. These streets are busy with drivers in high speed, drivers without having any lights or reflectors on their vehicles, drivers traveling wrong way, pedestrians moving and dodging through the traffics.

Several terrorists attacks have been directed towards tourist places in Egypt. Several bombings have happened resulting in many deaths of Egyptians. But in the second half of 2015, these threats declined considerably as the government confronted the terrorist attacks. But there were still some threats and successful terrorist activities in Cairo.

Political threats began to fluctuate since 2011. The frequency and size of demonstrations have been declined.  But still, political violence in Egypt is still high. The frequency and size of demonstrations have been declined.

Now let’s go through rankings given to each city in terms of risk. This rating is sourced from GeoSure, which rates the risk associated with any place from the scale of 0-100.

This scores highlighting the risk related to each sector in each city are all projects high risk involved in these cities. Cairo has the highest risk rank among all the places in Egypt. Since Cairo is the most populated city and the capital city of Egypt, the health facilities and availability of health assistance and medical emergencies are better than rest of the cities. Cairo can be considered as a riskiest city to live in Egypt. However, the visitors who had gone to Egypt have advised being more precautious while visiting. You can still enjoy the beauty of Egypt if you can be more precautious about yourself and your possessions.