With solo travel among women becoming more popular than ever, reasonable care should be taken while visiting the countries considered as the worst countries for solo female tourists: sexual harassment and rape. It is true that the world has become extremely women traveler-friendly in the recent years. Technology has played a part too. With forums and blogs coming up and information being disseminated effectively now, traveling has on a general grade become much safer than it used to be. But, on the down side of the story, some places still remain the marked areas on the world map where women should be thinking twice (or preparing twice as much) before venturing into.
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These are the places which are known to be hostile towards lone female travelers and being prone to crimes like rape and sexual harassment. Over the years there have been various institutional and organizational data generated on rape occurrences throughout the world but to compile a list such as this good judgment and caution is required to be exercised in order to provide a fair picture. That is because for an issue as sensitive as rape statistics often appear to be skewed due to the number of unreported occurrences being frequent. More often, the countries where these crimes are the most rampant are also the countries where rapes and sexual crimes are considered as taboo. Cases go unnoticed and unregistered because the victims fail to report in fear of societal backlash.
We didn’t rely on official rape statistics for these rankings, or otherwise perfectly safe countries such as Sweden, USA, and Australia would come up on this list. This would happen because, in the developed countries, rape crimes are more frequently reported, because rape victims have more awareness and are not afraid of social repercussion. For this kind of delicate topic, it is impossible to use official data and truly answer the question – what are the worst countries for solo female tourists when it comes to sexual harassment and rape.
Therefore, to make sure it reflects as much accurate information as possible from the solo traveler perspective, Insider Monkey has drawn up this list by researching dependable sources such as advisory and travel warnings in lieu of specific countries issued by US State Dept. Advisory and other State Travel Advisories. We have also looked up specific news articles for cases where female travelers have been subjected to ill-treatment and sexual crimes and also considered general opinion expressed by travelers on travel forums about general security in these countries. The list has been ranked according to the number of cases that have been discovered and the severity of the warnings issued against the respective countries. Also, we have limited our list to the countries which are considered to be as destinations for travel excluding the areas which have general conditions of political or social flux and considered as the “no-travel zone” anyway.
Apart from the countries pointed out here, also take a note of the 25 Most Dangerous Cities in the World which are also advised to be traveled to with caution.
So, let’s take a look at the Worst Countries for Solo Female Tourists: Sexual Harassment and Rape.
