According to a report of IPK International, a tourism consulting company specialized in tourism studies, 40 per cent of tourists were worried about the outbreak of terrorist attacks over the last two years, and 15 per cent of tourists decided not to travel at all.
International statistics show that tourism revenues have dropped by $1.1 trillion in five countries: France, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey and Brussels in 2015, compared to $1.2 trillion in 2014. It is worthy of note that travel costs slid after oil prices fall.
Furthermore, World Travel and Tourism Council reported that tourism sector could recover in the countries exposed to terrorist attacks, after 13 months of each attack.
According to the German Der Spiegel Magazine’s recent report, Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco are on the top of countries that are suffering a tourism fall , as against to Spain, Germany, Greece and Italy, which were able to revive its tourism sector.
Peter Hobil, a German crisis and communication expert, said that the unemployment rate is increasing in several countries as a result of tourism sector drop. Meanwhile terrorist organisations make use of the high unemployment to add more members to their organisations. For instance, tourists’ number in Antalya decreased to 40 per cent with a revenue loss worth €7bn, especially in the Turkish Riviera where hotels are close to bankrupt; furthermore 40 per cent of restaurants and hotels will shut down if the tourism sector continue to suffer from a drop, which means that work opportunities, will drop by 6 per cent in Turkey.
Corruption is another factor, along with terrorism, which knocks the economy down and is no less dangerous than terrorism; both can cause any country to collapse completely. Countries are striving to counter terrorist attacks and develop new projects. For instance, Egypt is among the prominent countries which regularly sets legalizations and accountability laws. Furthermore, Egypt has signed UN agreements to counter crimes in 2004 and another to counter corruption in 2005, along with being a member of the Middle East & North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF) founders in 2004. However, Egypt was not able to put an end to corruption due to inequality of incomes. Corruption, such as bribery and robberies, was severely present at the end of 2010. As a result, January 25th Egyptian revolution took place; Egyptian citizens’ first demand was to put an end to corruption and social injustice. Also, Egyptian citizens led their second revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood, on 30th June 2013 ,as Egyptians rejected to be ruled by violence and terrorism.
Corruption has a negative influence, not only on the economic and financial levels but also on the social and cultural values. The threat that corruption raises is not only embodied in bribery but also in values deterioration and seizing the right of fair competition. There is no doubt that the outbreak of corruption in everyday life, either in governmental bodies or other private entities, influences the values of the society.
Moving on to anti-corruption efforts, British anti-corruption bodies pointed out that the governmental plan of deleting millions of companies’ files will not be helpful in fighting corruption and money laundering. Marek Biggs, a retired police working as a manager of a financial investigation agency, says that shutting down companies is the easiest way to let companies hide their crimes. However, keeping a record of companies’ files would enable anti-corruption bodies to figure out any sort of law violation or corruption.
The British governmental body that is responsible for keeping a record of business files that belong to registered companies, is planning to delete the files of companies that were closed for more than 6 years; noting that the current law allows these files to be deleted after 20 years of the companies’ shutdowns.
Corruption and terrorism are both threatening and they are considered as moral crimes against humanity either they were done for personal, reasons or political motives.
