El Salvador ranks among the safest countries for the first time, according to Gallup Poll

The Global Security Report: Measuring Personal Safety around the World also revealed that Israel, one of the “safest” countries in 2022, had a 14 percentage point drop in safety since the October 7 Hamas attacks.

El Salvador placed for the first time among the “safest” countries in the world, says the Global Security Report released Monday by the Gallup consulting firm, according to which 88% of its citizens feel safe walking alone at night there.

The analysis firm attributes this record figure to the recent offensive by the government of Nayib Bukele against gangs.

El Salvador outperforms countries such as Switzerland, Iceland and Luxembourg by one percentage point. However, Latin America and the Caribbean, along with Sub-Saharan Africa, remain the regions where people feel least safe walking alone at night, with a respective percentage of 47% and 51%.

Ecuador, for example, ranked as the country with the lowest safety score in the world, with only 27% of its inhabitants saying they felt safe walking alone at night, a new historic low for the Central American country.

The country faces a security crisis that has intensified since the covid-19 pandemic, with a homicide rate of nearly 50 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, according to Gallup data.

Ecuador is surpassed by only three percentage points by countries such as South Africa and Liberia, which are statistically on a par with 30%, while Chile is also among the least safe countries with 36%.

In the 2022 report, 42% of Ecuador’s adult population said they felt safe walking alone at night, and Afghanistan was the country with the worst score at 22%.

The Global Security Report: Measuring Personal Safety Around the World also revealed that Israel, one of the “safest” countries in 2022, had a 14 percentage point drop in safety since the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Eighty-two percent of Israelis felt safe walking alone at night in 2022 compared to 68 percent of people who said they did so in the last survey.

Kuwait, with 99%, tops the list as the country with the best perception of safety, followed by Singapore (94%) and Norway (92%).

The report also revealed that 70% of adults worldwide said they felt safe walking alone at night in 2023, a considerable increase compared to the 64% who said the same in 2013, but a decrease of two percentage points compared to 2020.

Source: Forbes Centroamerica