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We’ve had heated discussions with people about the “morality” of our decision to travel to countries with authoritarian governments or places with poor human rights records, so I wanted to share – from our first-hand experiences – the benefits to locals and yourself from choosing to travel to such places.

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So instead of visiting Turkmenistan or North Korea I’ll visit little known or isolated places in Brazil, where (in a way) I’ll fulfill your five main points, but I’ll also have Carnaval and beaches right around the corner. I think of the difference between doing an Amazon tour out of Manaus with a well known tour company, vs. spending a week with a family that lives in a small riverside village.

The same options can be sought when visiting other “popular” destinations. In the end it’s not where you go but how you go and what you bring with you: the mindset, the attitude, the sense of responsibility, the open mind, etc.

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For us, our visit to Myanmar underscored that the current structure of sanctions by the US/EU and certain UN countries just isn’t working and it’s not because of the tourists like us that visit (when we were there tourism was down 80-90%). It’s hurting regular people more than the government because a big neighbor to the north (China) now has almost a monopoly on buying resources, food and minerals from the Myanmar government. So, the junta has no incentive to change because they have a secure buyer. We now understand that if the international community wants sanctions to have any effect, they have to get China’s buy-in. These are subtleties we didn’t understand before and we can now better support initiatives that are more likely to work. Also, we are stronger advocates for the people of Myanmar than before our trip – we’ve seen first hand how awful the government really is. It’s not just an impersonal story on the news anymore.

After our visit to China, we are more critical of the international community turning its back on human rights and “development” actions in exchange for keeping up good trade relations. Before, it was something we read about but we didn’t have the first hand knowledge to see how it is really playing out for the lives of ethnic minorities all over the country.

For us, the complexity of understanding we gain from these journeys into countries with authoritarian governments helps us become better advocates and a bit wiser about which national (eg. US) and international actions might have real effects against these governments and which actions are just spinning wheels (i.e., because there’s a deeper issue not being addressed by the int’l community).

So, we can agree to disagree.

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I believe that the powers that determine whether a country should be placed under sanctions have much greater intelligence than any individual traveller. Moreover, if an individual traveller decides to visit a country under sanction they undermine the effects of those sanctions.

So the general rule should: if you agree with the reasons given by a government to put a nation under sanction then you should support that government. If you don’t agree then you have a different argument.

For example, I have visited Cuba because I am an E.U. citizen I do not agree with the sanctions placed upon that country by the U.S.and I, to some extent, support the ideals of the Cuban government.

Further, when given the opportunity to cross from Thailand into Myanamar I was not interested to do so because to my knowledge it is governed by a military junta that does not represent the people.

Neither of the above countries is banned for travel by the E.U. but they are both frowned upon (Cuba to a lesser extent) so most of the moral dilema comes within your own conscience.

There are tens of thousands of individuals who would like to go to ‘banned countries’ out of curiosity. If we all went then sanctions would have limited effect. E.g. Myanamar would be very much like Thailand, with holiday resorts everywhere and the government doing well from the resulting taxes.

I think that this is well demonstrated by China.. we got used to doing trade with china and touristing it. China has gotten very wealthy from that and now the voice of protest against various human right abuses (not least Tibet) is all but ignored.

People tend to think that they as an individual can make some positive difference but I think collective action (in this case on the scale of nation against nation) is by far more effective. Tourism of any form is a trade and I think we all would benefit from making a united front for fairer trade and refrain from profiting from the countries who don’t play fair. The unfair governments of isolated countries will probably fall faster than those unfair governments that are part of the world trade community.

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@Karin: if you are interested in planning a visit to such countries, get your hands on a guide book, research the country online and ask questions on travel forums from other travelers who have gone before you (eg., Matador Community, Lonely Planet Thorntree or Bootsnall). Another place to get started for visas is this article: How to Travel to Rogue States.

@Alan: I agree that if you can’t travel independently within a country, it limits interaction with locals and achieving some of the goals above. The only country we’ve visited that required a tour was Turkmenistan. We thought we would constantly be watched, but we had much more freedom than imagined. North Korea is more difficult, however. We’ve heard the tours are incredibly restrictive and interaction with regular locals is almost non-existent. Each traveler has to research and weigh the potential benefits to locals of his/her trip and make a decision whether to travel to a place.

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The one exception I can think of would be North Korea. The tours and associated expenditures are so controlled that achieving any of the aforementioned goals is generally impossible.

You’d be better off donating money or time to groups that help North Koreans escape across the border, for example LiNK. http://www.linkglobal.org/

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It’s interesting, because I had a good friend who went to Cuba and loved, loved, loved everything Cuban (including what she saw as a misunderstood and much maligned-by-the-US Castro). This greatly influenced my outlook on this country, and I ended up learning about the vast organic food system they were essentially “forced” to put in place because of the embargo that included pesticides. And so over the past decade or so with the rise of organic farming, many US organic farmers have been learning from Cuba’s “discoveries.”

So I agree with the importance of people visiting these countries and sharing their experiences because when it comes down to it, we are all citizens of planet Earth, and can all relate on some level.

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