KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has been ranked among countries with the lowest advisory level for safety and security risk under the United States' newly-improved travel advisory programme.
The programme, launched by the Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs on Wednesday, ranked countries based on the US' assessment of country's security situation with a four-level ranking system.
It stated that Level One, the lowest advisory level, informed US travellers to "exercise normal precaution," Level Two is “exercise increased caution,” Level Three is “reconsider travel,” and Level Four is “do not travel.”
Among other countries which are ranked at Level One like Malaysia include Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, Kazakhstan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
On the other hand, countries ranked at Level Two include China, India, Indonesia, Phillippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
Countries ranked at Level Three include Cuba, Dominica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Lebanon, Sudan, Nigeria, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia and Venezuela.
Meanwhile, several countries which are ranked at Level Four include Afghanistan, Central African Republic (CAR), Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, Syria, South Sudan, Yemen and North Korea.
The bureau's Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Overseas Citizen Services, Michelle Bernier-Toth, in a teleconference briefing on Monday, said the improvement made was the first major overhaul after so many years and that the assessment of countries was conducted based on information provided by various parties.
"But essentially how we assess the threat level in a country hasn’t changed.
"There’s still a collaborative process that involves our security experts, the Intel community, host governments, our embassies and consulates, the information that they feed to us we then assess and determine how we are going to rank a country.
"That really hasn’t changed. It’s how we describe those conditions and set those levels that has changed," he said
She added that the travel advisory will be reviewed on a regular basis depending on the rating level of the particular country and circumstances.
"Levels One and Two will be reviewed every year, if not more frequently, depending on circumstances. Levels Three and Four we review every six months just as we did Travel Warnings.
"In the process of that review, we will look very carefully and we wanted to make sure that we were being consistent across the globe as to how we were assessing and ranking countries." she said.
