In 2023, WTW’s Crisis Management team assisted clients facing a wide range of events, including political evacuations, kidnappings, extortion, threats and medical emergencies. Over the course of the year there was an 18% rise in the total number of incidents responded to when compared to the year before.
This increase was driven by several high-profile events in Africa and the Middle East, including war in Sudan, a coup in Niger, and conflict between Israel and Hamas. These three events, in April, July, and October respectively, accounted for over a third of all incidents to which our team responded. The overwhelming number of these were political repatriations as clients looked to reduce risk to their personnel by removing them from the countries concerned, however kidnap, active assailant, piracy, threat and medical emergency cases were also handled by the Crisis Support team.
Percentage of incidents by month
Source: Alert:24 Operations Centre 2023
Regionally, Africa accounted for the most incidents, with the continent seeing a third of the total, a rise from 27% in 2022. This was predominantly driven by political repatriations from both Niger and Sudan, however both Ethiopia and South Africa also witnessed increases in the number of incidents, indicating a greater risk throughout much of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Although Africa saw the greatest number of incidents, the MENA region saw the steepest rise, from 2% in 2022 to close to a sixth of the total in 2023. The war between Hamas and Israel alone drove this rise however, with only one other incident handled in MENA not associated with the conflict.
Conversely Europe saw the steepest fall in the number of clients supported, from 31% to 14% between 2022 and 2023. This fall can be attributed to the significant spike in incidents handled following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Whilst the conflict still clearly continues, those clients requiring assistance had mostly implemented practical mitigation measures by 2023.
Percentage of incidents by region
Political repatriations accounted for 27.5% of the total number of incidents handled by the Crisis Support team. The three aforementioned events, in Sudan, Niger, and Israel/Gaza, accounted for all instances of political repatriation.
Threats also made up 27.5% of the total number of incidents managed by the Crisis Support team in 2023. Threats were reported by clients from all regions of the world. The United States and the United Kingdom saw the most reported threats, with the two countries accounting for approximately 60% of the total in 2023.
Percentage by incident type
Worldwide kidnapping incidents responded to by the team fell from 24% in 2022 to approximately 16% a year later. However, due to the rise in overall notifications, the actual change in reported kidnapping events was negligible. Reported kidnappings occurred in all regions except Europe and North America, with Africa and Latin America again accounting for the majority of events – 57% and 31% respectively.
Incident type by percentage 2022-2023
