The world’s safest countries by perception
From FDI Intelligence
Uzbekistan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia report lowest scores for real and perceived harm
Scroll down to explore scatter chart and table showing how different countries compare on actual and perceived levels of harm.
Central Asian countries have among the highest levels of perceived safety in the world, a factor crucial for a favourable, stable and predictable investment climate. However, experts warn this result is driven in part by their citizens tending to report lower levels of experienced harm.
The region was a top performer in the 2023 safety perceptions index (SPI), which assesses levels of real and perceived risks in 121 countries. Produced by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation (LRF) and Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), the SPI draws on surveys conducted in 2021 asking people about their worries and actual experiences of harm in five domains: food and water, violent crime, severe weather, mental health and workplace safety.
Uzbekistan had the lowest overall 2023 SPI score of 0.072, followed closely by the UAE (0.073), Saudi Arabia (0.093) and Norway (0.098). Uzbekistan secured the top spot due to having among the lowest experience rates of harm in violent crime, severe weather and mental health.https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/18975608/embed
More developed countries tend to have higher safety perception rates due to their greater resources for law enforcement, infrastructure and education, and public policies that help reduce risks for individuals. This is part of their success in attracting FDI, because higher levels of perceived risks are likely to deter companies from committing to projects in a country.
Region and country snapshot
At the regional level, the average rate of experience of harm across the wider Russia and Eurasia region was just 12.7%, 10 points lower than the global rate of 22.9%, according to the latest SPI which was based on feedback collected before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The region performs much better in the SPI than in other indices that objectively measure development, wellbeing and safety including the IEP’s annual global peace index. This is contrary to the fact that most countries’ SPI scores tend to correlate with their scores in the IEP’s global peace index.
Alex Vedovi, deputy director of research at the IEP, tells fDi that research shows there may be “cultural drivers” behind these striking results such as people in Central Asia being more likely to associate risk with “opportunity” than danger, and a societal expectation that people should “not air their dirty laundry” in public, which both lead to lower levels of reported risk.
The top 10 safest countries vary by region and systems of governance. Four of them are classified as authoritarian regimes by the Economist’s 2023 democracy index, namely Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Uzbekistan and China. https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/18976419/embed
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All the remaining 10 safest countries are full democracies — Norway, Estonia, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark — apart from Singapore, which the Economist describes as a flawed democracy because the city state’s parliamentary political system has been dominated by the ruling People’s Action Party since 1959.
“People’s sense of wellbeing and safety is very much determined by the sense of certainty about different threats,” says Mr Vedovi, adding that in more authoritarian regimes with high levels of state control, citizens can know what to expect and thus may have a sense of greater safety.
Sub-Saharan Africa was the worst performing region in the 2023 SPI, with the highest reported rates of experienced harm. Mali reported the largest deterioration in its overall score between the latest SPI based on a 2021 survey and its predecessor based on the 2019 survey, pre-pandemic. In the period between the two surveys, Mali experienced two military coups, faced activity from Islamic jihadists and suffered extreme weather events that further exposed the west African country to food shortages.
SOURCE: FDI Intelligence
