Videotapes from Iraq showing foreign hostages cowering in cages before being beheaded by their terrorist captors provide horrific testament to the danger that can bedevil expatriate employees today. By any definition, occupied Iraq remains a war zone and therefore an extreme example of the sort of workplace to which today’s global companies send their staff. But the truth is that there is now an all
too real potential for danger in almost every corner of the world.
According to the emergency planning division of executive charter company Air Partner International, 51 of the 196 countries the United Nations recognizes are considered sufficiently “at risk” of some sort of crisis as to require evacuation of personnel at some time or other. The UK-based group compiled the list using intelligence supplied by three separate independent security sources, as well as from the U.S. State Department and Britain’s Foreign Office. Of these countries (see map below), nine–the Central African Republic, Iraq, the Ivory Coast, North Korea, Liberia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Zimbabwe–are categorized as “extreme risks.”
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