Is Pakistan safe to travel?

There are many opinions and information on whether Pakistan is safe to travel to or not, from government agencies, travel bloggers, and travel book publishers. We can give you our opinion, but why? There are enough opinions out there for you to read. How about we give you the statistics, and you combine that with the opinions of others and decide for yourself if it is safe for you to go to Pakistan?

Consider this: If there is a plane crash anywhere in the world, you will hear about it on the news, though air travel is a safe mode of transportation. You will hear about the mass killings and suicide attacks happening on the other side of the world in the news with a bigger splash than the everyday street murders in your cities.

Before we get into numbers and statistics, please remember that each country defines a crime category and reporting methodology. The accuracy of crime reporting may differ from country to country. But hiding the high rate of violence, murder, or sexual assaults is difficult. Also, one can compare the statistics among countries of similar circumstances, economies, poverty levels, etc. For example, compare Pakistan with Egypt, Mexico, Brazil, India, etc., and the United Kingdom with Germany.

You will notice that Pakistan will fall into moderate to low in most crime categories. Its crime rate is lower than pretty much every country in the American continent except for Canada. Pakistan has a higher rate of death due to terrorism, and we discuss that further in this article.

Crime Rate:

Pakistan’s overall crime rate index is 43.2 (lower the better), and its rank is 85 (higher the better) out of 146 countries ranked. This data is available here for Pakistan and the whole globe. Compare this with some popular destinations with the worst crime rate rank; South Africa is close to the worst, ranked 5, Brazil 15, Chile 32, France 37, USA 58, Greece 69, India 83, and UK 63. (Source: NUMBEO).

Homicide Rate:

Pakistan ranks close to the bottom when it comes to the murder rate, with 4 murders per 100,000 per the 2021 data from the United Nations Drug and Crime Report. Compare that with South Africa’s rate of 34, Brazil 21, Chile 7, France 1, USA 7, Greece 1, India 3, and UK 1.17 murders per 100,000. You can find the latest Intentional Homicide numbers on the United Nations’ UNODC site.

Violent Crime:

Pakistan has a violent crime rate of 12 Per 100,000. Compare that with South Africa’s rate of 295, Brazil 216, Chile 57, France 548, USA 280, Greece 11.25, India 26 and UK 1.17 Per 100,000. You can find the latest Intentional Homicide numbers on the United Nations’ UNODC site.

Sexual Violence:

Pakistan has a sexual violence rate of about 3 Per 100,000. Compare that with South Africa’s rate of 88, Brazil’s 28, Chile’s 99, France’s 115, the USA’s 32, Greece’s 3, India’s 9, and the UK’s 274 Per 100,000. You can find the latest Intentional Homicide numbers on the United Nations’ UNODC site.

Terrorism:

Some history: On Christmas Eve, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and it resulted in a protracted proxy war between the Soviets and the United States until 1989. The USA used Pakistan as its base to provide support to Afghans (present-day Taliban) and their supporters fighting the Soviets. About four million Afghans took refuge in Pakistan.

After the Soviets were defeated in 1989, the Americans left, and the Taliban took over Afghanistan. Post September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States invaded and occupied Afghanistan until it left in 2021. These conflicts in Afghanistan spilled over into Pakistan for various reasons, such as Pakistan’s involvement in the conflicts, the large Afghan refugee population in Pakistan, geopolitical wranglings, and internal Pakistani political conflicts.

2008-2017 was particularly the height of terrorist attacks in Pakistan. While most of these were in the western regions of Pakistan close to Afghan and Iran borders with Pakistan, some of the attacks spilled into Pakistan’s heartland.

At its height, there were 2215 terrorist attacks resulting in 2876 deaths (Source: Our World in Data: Terrorism). The latest data available from 2021, the number of attacks was 150, resulting in 196 deaths. Afghanistan, for the same period, suffered 1453 attacks resulting in 4337 deaths, India 235 attacks and 153 deaths, South Africa 15 attacks and 8 deaths, Chile 45 attacks and 1 death.

Table below shows the latest available data side-by-side comparison of topics discussed above.

Sources:

1. Numbeo
2. United Nations Office on Drugs An Crimes
3. Source: Our World in Data: Terrorism