When did Tunisia get the attention of the world?
It seems like Tunisia has entered a negative cycle of attacks and terrorism is not stopping anytime soon.
Following my analysis of the impact of the previous terrorist attack on the Bardo museum in Tunisia, I have had some good feedback about the idea of the analysis. And after the unfortunate second terrorist attack on tourists in Sousse, I've wanted to explore the impact of this event as well.
In the mean time, ever sense I wrote the first draft for this post, there have been more then a lot of terrorist attacks in Tunisia and the situation in general is getting complicated.
There has been a long stream of articles and people talking in the media about the image of Tunisia in the world. How would the world see us, what kind of impact could theses terrorist attacks have on the country, especially on it's tourism.
Almost like the Bardo Attack, this one has targeted tourists from various nationalities.The largest number of victims were from the UK.
After this attack, many travel agencies have cancelled all their programs in Tunisia, we have heard news about tourist leaving the country, and others refusing to leave and decided to support Tunisia and stay few extra days there.
The country's tourism sector is a large employer, with approximately 400.000 direct and indirect jobs (wiki) and about 7% of the national GDP.
The worst news I have heard so far, is the UK deciding to consider Tunisia as a dangerous destination, and not allowing any UK citizen to go there.
Other countries have apparently decided to stop allowing their citizen to visit Tunisia too after this tragic terrorist attack.
All these things add up to the claims that the tourism in Tunisia is a very important sector in the economy and we have to maintain it as a source of foreign currency, so terrorists want to make this country paralyzed by attacking innocent visitors and civilians
When did Tunisia get the attention of the world?
Mainly in 2011, the Arab spring, the jasmin revolution..etc
all of these terms were news headlines referring to the Tunisian People movement against the dictatorship and the corrupt regime.
After that, the world internet community did not have much interest in Tunisia ( because there were other events that took the headlights).
But the interest was back in 2015 twice. The first one was because of the Bardo Mesuem Attack in March, and the second time was because of the Sousse Attack on tourists in June.
The thing that I have noticed is that, every-time an event happens that involves tourist, the world seems to care more about what is happening.
Finally, I hope that this series of bad events ends very soon and Tunisia gets back to its good days!