Global safety starts to slip
Namibia ranks among the top 10 countries where people feel the least safe, with only 37% stating they feel secure walking alone at night, according to an annual Gallup survey on global safety.More than 60% of Namibian citizens reported feeling unsafe walking alone at night in their city or area.
Joining Namibia in the top 10 are Malawi (40%), Gambia (38%), Zimbabwe (38%), Eswatini (37%), Chile (36%), Botswana (32%), Liberia (30%), South Africa (30%) and Ecuador (27%).
Gallup’s latest annual Global Safety Report found that people worldwide feel safer today than they did a decade ago.
The report explores who feels the most and least secure worldwide, based on metrics such as how safe they feel walking alone at night.
“In 2023, 70% of adults worldwide said they feel safe walking alone at night where they live, which is considerably higher than it was a decade ago and at most points in Gallup’s nearly 20-year trend,” the report noted.
However, it also highlighted that many countries still have a long way to go to achieve the “peaceful societies” essential for sustainable development.
Progress stalls
Progress has stalled on this measure in the past several years, and slightly fewer people today feel safe than in 2020, when a record-high 72% felt safe.
Regionally, at least seven in 10 people feel safe in Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Northern America (US and Canada), and 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%).
People continue to feel the least safe in sub-Saharan Africa (51%) and 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 feel safe has never topped 50%.
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 and Latin America and the Caribbean.
Crime statistics
Furthermore, according to Numbeo's latest poll on crime and cities in the world, Pietermaritzburg leads in South Africa with a crime index of 82.4.
Pretoria is second, Johannesburg fifth, Durban sixth and Gqeberha seventh.
Windhoek is in 31st position with a crime index of 67.1, two places below Mexico City, notorious for its crime levels. The safest city in the world, at 321st, is Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The crime index in the city is 11.9.
Windhoek's position is worrying when population figures are taken into account. Windhoek has 494 000 inhabitants.