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Busayo Onanaye, Junior data analyst, Lloyd's Register Foundation
Since the World Risk Poll was first conducted in 2019, the world has experienced profound disruption. The Covid-19 pandemic increased extreme weather events, and escalating conflicts all contributed to this changing global landscape. In the 2024 ‘State of the Global Climate’ report, the World Meteorological Organisation stated that 2023 was the “warmest year on record” (a record that would be beaten again in 2024) and that “heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires and rapidly intensifying cyclones caused misery and mayhem”.
However, when respondents to the Poll in 2023 were asked how safe they felt compared with five years previously, the most common responses were ‘about as safe as before’ and ‘more safe’ –both at 37%, as shown in Figure 1 below.
Understanding why people reported feeling just as safe as they did five years ago requires examination of broader indicators of political stability. The World Bank Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism Percentile Rank captures the stability of a country’s political environment and the likelihood of violence or terrorism. A lower percentile rank indicates less stability and higher risk of violence, while higher percentiles indicate less conflict and greater stability. In 2019, the average rank across approximately 200 countries was 48. Notably, this figure remained unchanged in 2023, contextualising the World Risk Poll finding that most people perceived their level of safety to be the same or higher than in 2019.
The most common responses were that people felt more safe and about as safe as before. However, a sizeable minority (26%) did report feeling less safe in 2023. To understand what might have caused this, it is worth examining confidence in government.
It is reasonable to hypothesize that those feeling less safe would also report low confidence in government. Citizens rely on their governments to establish laws, safety regulations, and emergency response systems; from road safety and worker protections to earthquake-resistant infrastructure and disaster response protocols. Without these safeguards, trust erodes, and people may feel more vulnerable in their daily lives.
Figure 2 below shows how perceptions of overall safety influence, and are influenced by, confidence in government. Our analysis confirms this link. Among respondents who felt less safe than five years prior, more than half (59%) reported lacking confidence in their national government. Conversely, three quarters (75%) of people who felt safer expressed confidence in their government.
To better understand how overall safety perceptions relate to specific threats, the Poll asked respondents to identify the greatest risk to their safety in daily life. Among those who answered both that they felt less safe than five years previously and that they were not confident in their government, crime and violence was by far the most frequently stated greatest risk to their daily safety. A third (33%) of this group gave this answer, 20 percentage points higher than among the general global population, as shown in Figure 3 below.
To delve further into this relationship, it would be helpful to consider the regional distribution of the ‘less safe, no confidence’ group and see if any countries are overrepresented. By using the proportion of respondents from each country in the full dataset versus the proportion in the ‘less safe, no confidence’ group, we can calculate an overrepresentation ratio whereby any number above 1 suggests overrepresentation. Overrepresentation signifies that a country’s respondents are more likely to have answered that they feel less safe and have no confidence in their government.
Based on this analysis, the top five overrepresented countries in the ‘less safe, no confidence’ group were Lebanon, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, and Peru, with Lebanon and Ecuador in particular standing out with a ratio of around 4 – meaning people from these countries were four times more likely to feel unsafe and lack confidence in government than the global average, as shown in Figure 4 below.
To better understand what might have caused this, it is important to review events that occurred in Lebanon and Ecuador between iterations of the World Risk Poll. During this period (2019-2023), Lebanon experienced severe economic stagnation which was marked by hyperinflation and very high unemployment. This led to the Lebanese Pound losing over 90% of its value. By 2021, government debt was equivalent to 495% of the country’s GDP. Large-scale protests took place from 2019 onwards, starting with the ‘October Revolution’ in response to a proposition by the government to start taxing WhatsApp calls. These events provide more context to the lack of citizen confidence in their government and emphasises the importance of accountable government in making people feel safe.
Amid these ongoing economic challenges, Lebanon experienced a major shock in 2020 when a port explosion in Beirut killed over 200 people. The incident was attributed to improperly stored ammonium nitrate. By 2025, Amnesty International reported that the domestic investigation into the explosion was being obstructed by Lebanese authorities, leaving many questions unresolved for citizens affected by the event.
This analysis of World Risk Poll data illustrates how perceptions of safety are closely tied to both specific threats and broader socio-political conditions. People who felt less safe than previously, and who lacked confidence in their governments, were more likely to cite crime and violence as their primary safety concerns, with notable overrepresentation in countries including Lebanon and Ecuador.
In these contexts, economic instability, political unrest, and high-profile events such as the 2020 Beirut port explosion contribute to heightened perceptions of vulnerability. Together, these patterns underscore the importance of stable governance, effective institutions, and accountable responses to crises in shaping how safe people feel in their daily lives. By linking individual perceptions to real-world socio-political dynamics, the Poll highlights the complex interplay between governance, local conditions, and public confidence in determining personal safety.
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