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Lucy Popescu says responsible and ethical tourism can highlight injustice and act as a boost for those struggling to improve human rights all over the world

TOURISM is essentially egocentric. Most of us travel for pleasure, to relax or as an escape. Naturally, most people don’t want to be told where to go or what they can and can’t do on holiday. But hot on the heels of sustainable travel and the rise of companies that calculate carbon emissions and invest in projects to offset them is the notion of ethical travel. Given the global financial crisis, we already have to think more carefully about where we want to go for our holidays and why.

Many of the poor in the world are dependent on tourism for their livelihoods. In addition, sustained tourism can help to preserve and pay for the heritage of poorer countries. But as well as becoming acquainted with diverse cultures, tourists can learn about corrupt governments or repressive states and see for themselves the problems faced by the local people. They can further benefit a local population when they decide to do something about it on their return.  Increased awareness of corruption or repression is a first step towards creating pressure for change. Supporting the campaigns of Amnesty and other human rights’ organisations is the next stage.

But the timing also seemed right for an ethical travellers’ guide. So I wrote one. In my book, The Good Tourist, I highlight those places where the dream holiday ticket and human rights violations collide. Turning the concept of a travel guide on its head, it is a whole lot about civil liberties with a little bit about the country’s attractions thrown in. However, the point is not to discourage travel to a particular country, but to make the reader aware of the harsher realities and suggest ways that they can help on their return – by joining a particular organisation working in the field, changing where they shop, sponsoring a child or doing something as simple as writing a letter of appeal.

The book was actually inspired by a feature in Tribune. Two-and-a-half years ago, Joan Smith and I were looking aat n article entitled “The World Cup of Evil”. Capitalising on the prevalent football mania, this league table of nations’ human rights charted the progress of the “no good, the bad and the very bad in a competition to find the world’s vilest nation”. Joan and I had worked together in human rights when I was director and she was chair of English PEN’s Writers in Prison Programme. We were interested to see what was written about the countries and regions we were familiar with. At the same time, the seed of an idea was planted.

Responsible travel is now becoming common currency in Britain and this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Unfortunately, there are still many offenders in the world, as the stories and testimonies of some of their victims clearly demonstrate. And it is not necessarily just the poorer, developing world countries that suffer from repressive regimes; many civil liberties are being infringed in unexpected quarters. For instance, Cheikh Kone, a dissident journalist from the Ivory Coast, was held in one of Australia’s notorious detention centres for almost three years before being granted asylum. He witnessed suicide and “inmates slicing themselves, sewing their lips or flying into razor-sharp wire, not because they were insane but because of the den of frustration they found themselves in”.

Faraj Bayrakdar still bears the scars of the horrific torture he suffered in the desert prisons of Syria. Kareem, an Egyptian blogger, remains incarcerated today for posting comments that were deemed to be anti-religious and insulting to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Shi Tao, a cyber dissident in China, is currently serving 10 years in prison for sending an email to a pro-democracy website based in the United States, in which he summarised a government order directing media organisations in China to downplay the upcoming anniversary of the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square.

As well as threats to freedom of expression, there are plenty of other human rights violations occurring every day. In Mexico, most of us are aware of the narco-traffickers’ bloody battles, but perhaps less well known is the terrible violence perpetuated against women in certain parts of the country, often with impunity. In South Africa, the abuse of children is reaching epidemic proportions. In Uzbekistan, children as young as nine are forced to work in the cotton fields. Some would say that slavery has never disappeared from the US; it has just changed its outward appearance with the exploitation of migrant workers. Then there accounts of torture in custody in surprise trouble spots such as the Maldives, where they recently concluded their first multi-party elections –which concluded with the defeat of the incumbent president, so there may be signs of hope. There is also the persecution of homosexuals in Iran and the targeting and killing of journalists in Russia, whilst Amnesty International and others continue to lobby against the application of the death penalty in China and the US.

Many people believe that last year’s protests in Burma were the result of interaction with tourists. Although the so-called Saffron Revolution didn’t have a positive outcome, it served to bring Burma to the world’s attention again. For years, human rights organisations had been trying to highlight the plight of those incarcerated for attempting to practice their profession peacefully – writers, journalists, human rights activists and opposition supporters. Suddenly they were in the news again – no longer the forgotten, languishing in prison. Now the junta has to tread a little more carefully, because it realises that the global community is more aware of the abuses it has perpetuated for so long.

The surge of travellers into China for the Olympic Games in August resulted in foreign journalists being allowed to access to websites formally blocked by the state. This concession remains in place today and one hopes that this chink of light heralds a new era of compromise that will be extended to China’s citizens.

So tourists can actually help the country he or she may visit by improving human rights or contributing to a change in standards.  As the late great Polish travel reporter Ryszard  Kapuscinski noted, a journey “neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends when we have reached our doorstep once again. It starts much earlier and is really never over, because the film of memory continues running on inside of us long after we have come to a physical standstill.”

Lucy Popescu is the author of The Good Tourist, published by Arcadia Books at £11.99