Is the World Really Safer? Global Perceptions of Safety and Interpersonal Violence

The Global Safety Report is one of the many products of Gallup’s World Poll. This massive annual undertaking, which entails nationally representative surveys of more than 145,000 adults in 144 countries and territories, has been conducted since 2006. For this year’s report, NYU’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC) partnered with Gallup to contribute our policy analysis. 

The main surveyed question is “Do you feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where you live?” This is one of the official indicators for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 on “Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions,” specifically indicator 16.1.4. In addition to this question, the survey also asked respondents about their confidence in local police and whether they had experienced assault or theft in the previous 12 months. The results are compiled into a ranking of perceptions of safety around the world, as well as a broader-reaching Law and Order Index that provides a snapshot of people’s confidence in security and law enforcement in their countries.

Our team at CIC had the opportunity to examine this data and compare it to the findings of our flagship report, Beyond the Battlefields: Practical Strategies to Halving Global Violence in Our Homes, Streets, and Communities. The Flagship Report summarizes over three years of work and research by the Halving Global Violence Task Force, analyzing the prevalence and multifaceted impacts of interpersonal violence—i.e., the violence experienced in our homes and streets outside of conflict zones—and highlighting proven and promising solutions to prevent and reduce it.

The findings of the Global Safety Report underscore many of our Flagship Report’s conclusions. People’s sense of safety is influenced more by interpersonal violence than by broader geopolitical conflict, highlighting the significant impact of local violence on people’s daily lives. It also shows that this impact is not felt equally across genders, with women feeling persistently less safe in their communities than men. It also gives some indication of the critical role that local actors can play in creating a safer world for all. And finally, it shows that violence is not inevitable and that positive change is possible, core tenets of the work of the Halving Global Violence team at CIC. 

In the following sections, we provide a more detailed examination of each topic.

The World Feels Safer than Ever

The main finding of the Global Safety Report is that the world is feeling safer now than at any time since Gallup started collecting this data in 2006. People felt safest in the Asia-Pacific and Western European regions, and least safe in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. Nonetheless, the LAC region achieved a significant milestone: for the first time, 50 percent of respondents reported feeling safe walking alone at night.

It may be surprising to see these results, especially when many indicators suggest the world is becoming less safe. In fact, we are experiencing more interstate conflicts—military confrontations and wars between countries—now than at any point since World War II, and political polarization is on the rise. 

However, while conflict and geopolitical tensions undoubtedly have a considerable impact on the lives of a significant share of the population, interpersonal violence most directly affects the lives of the majority of people in the world. 

As highlighted in the Beyond the Battlefields report, intentional homicides—the killing of one person by another—cause nearly four times more deaths than conflict and terrorism combined, and cases of non-lethal interpersonal violence—such as assaults, threats, or domestic abuse—far outnumber homicides.

Most of the countries that rank among the safest in the Global Safety Report are economically advanced, characterized by strong institutions and low levels of interpersonal violence. In contrast, almost all the 10 lowest-ranking countries face high levels of interpersonal violence but are not directly involved in geopolitical conflicts. 

Taking all of this into account, it is reasonable to assume that the global decline in interpersonal violence—reflected in falling intentional homicide rates over the past two decades—has a greater impact on people’s everyday perception of safety than geopolitical security challenges. This reinforces the message championed by the Halving Global Violence Task Force: achieving the SDG16 targets and building a safer world for all requires supporting action to prevent and reduce all forms of violence, not just conflict.

The Gender Gap Persists

Despite the gains in perceived safety across the majority of the population, a significant gap remains between men and women. In 104 of the 144 countries surveyed, a difference of more than 10 percentage points was observed between genders, with women consistently reporting feeling less safe walking alone at night than men. Perhaps most surprisingly, the gap is largest in high-income countries: of the top 10 countries with the largest gap, nine are high-income countries.

In our policy analysis, we examine several factors that may contribute to this persistent gap. Evidence consistently shows that women are at greater risk of violence from within their intimate circles than from strangers. In our flagship report, we highlight that over half of all homicides of women and girls are perpetrated by an intimate partner or family member, compared to only 11 percent of homicides where the victim is male. Nonetheless, despite being at greater risk of violence from people they know rather than strangers, women still feel less safe than men in their communities, such as when walking alone at night.

It is worth noting that while men are more likely to be victims of lethal violence, the gap narrows when looking at non-lethal violence. In the 2024 Gallup World Poll survey, the share of men and women who reported being assaulted in the past year differed by only two percentage points.

Additionally, countries with low levels of overall violence—many of them high-income—tend to have higher comparative levels of violence against women. This suggests that general violence-reduction policies are falling short in addressing gender-specific forms of violence, highlighting the need for targeted efforts to prevent violence against women and girls. Further, as is underscored by our previous work, violence is a multifaceted phenomenon, and we should consider matters related to safety and security through a similar lens. 

The perceived sense of safety involves additional factors beyond the actual risk of victimization. In many parts of the world, women are constrained in their economic rights, freedom of movement, and decision over their marriage status. On average, women only have three-quarters of the same rights as men, and less than half of all countries have achieved gender parity in primary education. All these conditions play an important role in shaping how unsafe women and girls feel: Even those who do not consider themselves in immediate risk of experiencing violence can still perceive themselves as being in a vulnerable and unsafe position in society.

The Role of Cities in Building Safer Societies

As noted earlier, the world is facing a period of heightened geopolitical tensions. Yet, improvements in perceptions of safety point to the growing importance of local-level security efforts in fostering safer communities. 

As noted in the Beyond the Battlefields report, violence, although universal, tends to be hyper-localized: In Latin America, for example, 50 percent of crimes are concentrated in 3-8 percent of street segments. This highlights the importance of grounding violence prevention and reduction efforts in a deep understanding of local dynamics and empowering local leaders to drive solutions.

In our policy analysis, we used two cities in Brazil as examples. For the first time in nearly 20 years, since the first edition of the Global Safety Report, more than half of Brazil’s population has reported feeling safe while walking alone at night. Cities like Niterói and Pelotas are making measurable progress towards preventing violence and improving safety in the country, starting with their own communities through data-informed, holistic, and cross-sectoral public safety strategies that engage communities and blend law enforcement with services to address security challenges. Since these strategies have started being implemented (2017 for Pelotas, 2018 for Niterói), they have observed an almost 70 percent reduction in rates of deadly violence, and a similar result for rates of violent crime.

The success of these strategies is evidence of the important role cities can play in preventing violence from the bottom up and of their potential to support national-level efforts. 

At CIC, we have a long-standing commitment to supporting cities and local leaders through the Peace in Our Cities network, which we co-facilitate. Both Niterói and Pelotas are members and have participated in peer-to-peer exchanges, engaged with urban violence experts, and contributed to the network’s body of research and resources, demonstrating the power of city-to-city collaboration to drive policy innovation and develop effective approaches to violence prevention.

Change is Possible

The Halving Global Violence Task Force has consistently refuted the refrain that violence is inevitable or that certain communities, countries, or regions are inherently violent. When examining the results of the Global Safety Report, we see that significant shifts in safety perceptions can occur in a relatively short period of time. 

Even regions that still score relatively low on this year’s report are making measurable progress towards becoming safer, as is the case with Latin America and the Caribbean, which have crossed the 50 percent threshold in perceived safety for the first time in the report’s history. 

Universal progress is similarly possible. In a little over a decade, perceptions of safety worldwide have increased by more than ten percent. Nonetheless, it is essential to note that these gains in perceived safety have not been experienced equally across regions or demographics. This underscores that there are still many challenges to be faced in building a safer world for all, and that sustained progress towards peace and safety can only be made with ongoing investment, political will, and a thorough understanding of specific local and national contexts.

The Road Ahead for Safer Communities

The world is now safer than ever—at least by some measurements. Although this would be too general a statement to make based solely on the data presented in the Global Safety Report, what we can confidently assert is that people feel safer than they have at any point since 2006, despite increased geopolitical security concerns. 

This underscores that perception of safety, like many other aspects of human life, is most directly impacted by someone’s daily lived experiences, rather than broader, large-scale events that permeate their lives. This is why the Halving Global Violence Task Force has made its mission to shine a spotlight on the violence that happens in our homes and streets and share what works to prevent and reduce it.

As this report illustrates, and as highlighted in our previous work, progress towards a safer and more peaceful world is possible, and in many respects, it is already happening. People feel safer now, at least partially because rates of interpersonal violence are coming down. However, these gains are not being felt equally across the population, with women feeling generally less safe than men—even if they are not at more risk of experiencing imminent violence. This highlights that to create a safer world, we need a holistic approach that considers safety and security as a whole-of-society and whole-of-government issue, and that considers the many aspects of someone’s existence that might make them feel vulnerable in society.

This is why we champion the importance of cities and local leaders in spearheading these efforts: with their in-depth knowledge of their specific local context and leaning on relatively agile city structures, local governments are in a prime position to implement evidence-based, cross-sectoral, and effective strategies to reduce violence in their communities and create a safer world for all. 

The cities highlighted in this write-up are not alone in their success: there are many other examples of cities and local governments across regions and political contexts making significant progress towards reducing violence and increasing safety in their communities. 

What is needed now is to scale and sustain these efforts, empowering cities and communities everywhere to lead the way towards lasting safety and peace.