The World's Most Dangerous Countries

March 24, 2010 — -- "I have plans to go to Mexico, but … should I?"

This is a question I've been hearing repeatedly since the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning for Mexico last week.

Mexico is just the latest member of a club that now includes 30 nations around the world, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Israel, Nepal and the Philippines (a complete list of travel warning countries appears at the end of this column).

So what does it all mean?

For more air travel news and insights, visit Rick's blog at: http://farecompare.com

According to the State Department, official warnings are issued to describe "long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable" (travel alerts, on the other hand, are issued for short-term events, including natural disasters).

For Mexico, you might say it's a case of a few very bad areas spoiling it for an entire country. Even the State Department acknowledges that millions of people safely visit Mexico each year, including tens of thousands who cross the border every day; however, some of the border towns have gotten increasingly violent.

Stay Up to Date on the Latest Travel Trends From ABC News on Twitter.

Indeed, most of the violence -- and it is drug-related -- plays out in border towns like Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and Nogales, which the State Department warning says "have experienced public shootouts during daylight hours in shopping centers and other public venues."

"Yes," said Houston-based Aleasha Stephens of AllAboutMexico.com, "people are telling us they are cancelling bookings to Mexico." Stephens says the travel warning is just the latest in a series of tourism catastrophes that have plagued the country beginning with the global economic crisis, followed by last year's outbreaks of the H1N1 virus (first called swine flu when it was reported in the Mexican state of Veracruz).