-New Global Safety Report indicates
By Jerromie S. Walters
A new Global Safety Report released this week shows Liberia is one of the countries where citizens feel the least safe walking alone. The report was conducted by Gallup, and it measures personal security worldwide. Gallup is a global analytics and advisory firm.
In 2023, the report says just 30% of Liberians said they felt safe walking alone at night where they live. This is similar to South Africa and slightly better than Ecuador, where just 27% of Ecuadorians said they felt safe walking alone at night where they live.
For Ecuador, the report says this is a new record-low for the country, the lowest in Latin America, and numerically the lowest in the entire world. According to Gallup statistics, Ecuador, South Africa, and Liberia are the three least countries where people feel safe walking alone.
“Liberia posted the lowest score on the index for the second straight year, mostly attributable to the high percentage of residents who have been victims of crime and their low sense of security. Almost half of Liberians (45%) said they had money or property stolen in the past year, and more than one in four (28%) had been the victim of assault, which was the highest rate in the world. Thirty percent said they felt safe walking alone at night where they live, one of the lowest rates in the world,” the report indicates.
According to the Global Peace Index, there are currently 56 active conflicts worldwide — the highest number since World War II. However, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 includes “feel[ing] safe walking alone at night” as an indicator (16.1.4).
Law and order:
In addition to asking people about their feelings of safety and their confidence in the police, Gallup asks two additional questions about their personal experiences with assault and theft in the past year. In 2023, almost one in eight (13%) said they had property stolen from them or another household member in the past year, and 7% said they were assaulted or mugged. Both of these numbers have remained stable for almost two decades.
Gallup compiles the “positive” responses to these four questions into a Law and Order Index score for each country. The higher the score, the higher the proportion of the population that reports feeling safe. Scores on the Law and Order Index are highly related to traditional development indicators, including global income, health, food security, and homicide metrics.
The index score for the world in 2023 was 81 out of a possible 100, which is in line with scores since 2017. Scores at the country level in 2023 ranged from a high of 98 in Kuwait to a low of 50 in Liberia. Liberia posted the lowest score on the index for the second straight year, mostly attributable to the high percentage of residents who have been victims of crime and their low sense of security.
Almost half of Liberians (45%) said they had money or property stolen in the past year, and more than one in four (28%) had been the victim of assault, which was the highest rate in the world. Thirty percent said they felt safe walking alone at night where they live, one of the lowest rates in the world.
What Liberians think:
Varney Fahbulleh, a Liberian and civil rights activist, concurs with the report. He says, “Let me first appreciate the report. These are things that we are experiencing. Liberia is not safe. By 8-9:00 PM, if you come on the streets of Montserrado, you will realize that the country itself is not safe.
He gives his personal experience, “This one time, I was coming from Duala, and the kekeh tried to pass me Waterside. When we passed the checkpoint, I only saw two police personnel. At midnight. Two Female police. When we passed the checkpoint, we were robbed by those gangsters because the security sector was not functioning. They took everything I had, and I couldn’t do anything because my life comes first.”
He believes the border points are vulnerable, and this has led to the indescribable importation of illicit substances that many young people have been addicted to and later resulting in being criminals. “My survey and research that I made [I live in central Montserrado County] you can not come on the street around 10-11:00 PM.” He recommends the need for the government to make recruitment into the security sector and ensure that the needed financial and logical support is available.
Fahbulleh is not alone, Hawa Jawalah, a local businesswoman in central Monrovia, also acknowledges the undeniable rate of insecurity in Liberia, especially Monrovia. He says: “I have experienced it plenty times. Slapping, jerking phones. Plenty of things na (have) happened in front of me. “One day, I was coming here by 11-12 in the night, and one woman was standing on the road waiting for a bike, three boys were on a bike they slapped the woman and took her phone. That thing is happening every day, every single day.”
Meanwhile, another Liberian and businessman in Monrovia, Samukai Bility recognizes the criminal rate in Liberia but slightly defaults with the report. “I will not be able to speak for the entire country, but where I reside in Monrovia, Monrovia is safe. For the criminal rate in Monrovia, for various junctions like in central Monrovia, people may experience some night logos (at-risk youths) jerking people’s properties at night. Yes, that one can happen, but for communities outside Monrovia, where we know ourselves, we don’t experience anything like that,” he states. Samukai Bility encouraged the need for government to do more recruitment in the security sector to strengthen the security of the state.
Globally:
On a global level, the Gallup report says people felt safer in 2023 than they did a decade ago. The 70% of adults who said they felt safe walking alone at night last year is considerably higher than the 64% who reported this in 2013. However, progress has stalled in the past few years, and in 2023, slightly fewer people felt safe than they did in 2020, when a record-high 72% felt safe.
Regionally, at least seven in 10 people felt safe in Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Northern America (U.S. and Canada), and in post-Soviet Eurasia. Of all the regions, post-Soviet Eurasia has gained the most ground in the past two decades; almost twice as many felt safe in 2023 (71%) as in 2006 (37%).
Gallup emphasizes that people continue to feel the least safe in sub-Saharan Africa (51%), Latin America, and the Caribbean (47%). Further, feelings of safety have declined more in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region over the past two decades. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the percentage who said they felt safe has never topped 50% at any point.
For years, the small Andean nation of Ecuador was known as a relatively peaceful country located between the world’s two largest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru. But since COVID-19, the country has spiraled into a deep security crisis. Ecuador is an increasingly important node in global cocaine trafficking. Gang violence and homicides have spiked as a result, with Ecuador’s murder rate reaching nearly 50 per 100,000 residents in 2023, one of the highest rates in the world.
The report says the countries in which residents are least likely to say they feel safe walking alone at night are exclusively a mix of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean — which tends to be the case each year. Only Namibia and Malawi were not on the list in 2022.
Howbeit, El Salvador, once known as the murder capital of the world, made the top of the “most safe” list for the first time in 2023, with a record-high 88% of residents saying they felt safe. Although the country has drifted toward becoming a police state, the government’s crackdown on gangs— which have incarcerated approximately 2% of the country’s population — has made the country safer, for now. El Salvador currently boasts one of the lowest homicide rates in the Western Hemisphere.
Kuwait, the current country leader, posted scores in the 90s on the index in 2022 and 2019. The country’s 2023 score is its highest to date, bolstered by the 99% of residents who said they felt safe and the low experiences with assault (4%) and theft (1%). Kuwaiti residents are not asked about their confidence in the police.
Methodology:
Gallup indicates that results in the report are based on nationally representative, probability-based samples among the adult population aged 15 and older in 140 countries and areas in 2023. Except for China and a subset of 26 countries, Gallup stressed that the 2023 results are based on telephone or face-to-face surveys of approximately 1,000 or more respondents.
