The WTO has urged the international community to pool its resources to protect travel against terrorism fears that have devastated the industry in Tunisia and Egypt.
The World Tourism Organization has urged the international community to pool its resources to protect travel against terrorism fears that have devastated the industry in Tunisia and Egypt. On the opening day of a conference on tourism in Gammarth, a northern suburb of Tunis, WTO secretary general Taleb Rifai said, "The entire international community has the responsibility to help and support. We will never allow the forces of darkness to stop us from traveling to Tunis, to Egypt, to all parts of the world. Everybody must help everybody else to make sure that they don't win the battle, and they will not win the battle."
‘Tunisia's tourism sector has been brought to a standstill following the jihadist attacks that killed 60 people in March and June 2015. The WTO has urged the international community to pool its resources to protect travel against terrorism fears. The WTO chief insisted that the technological means to fend off terrorism were available.’
Rifai insisted that the technological means to fend off terrorism were available. He said, "We have the technological means, we have management abilities to be able to control that. We should uplift and upstage our ability to make travel safe. We are not utilizing enough technological means, we are not cooperating enough as an international community in terms of intelligence and sharing information." The two-day conference, organized by the WTO and Tunisian government, follows jihadist attacks in Tunis and the seaside resort of Sousse that killed 60 people in March and June 2015, all but one of them foreign tourists.
Tunisia's tourism sector, which accounts for almost 10% of Gross Domestic Product and employs 400,000 people, has been brought to a standstill. Elsewhere in North Africa, tourism to Egypt has plunged after the October 31, 2015, crash of a Russian plane which took off from its Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The Islamic State jihadist group said that its militants downed the plane, and while the cause of the crash has yet to be established, there is growing suspicion that it was a bomb. Despite such heavy blows, Rifai was upbeat on the prospects for the tourism industry and forecast a turnaround within a couple of months.
He said, "We must never allow these incidents to intimidate us. By this end of this month, by the end of this year, you?ll see that the trend will reverse."
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Source-AFP