Kenya has been ranked position 25 among the most dangerous countries in the world with a Global Peace Index (GPI) of 2.302.
According to Yahoo! Finance, Kenya ranked 34 in Global Peace Index, 20 in Terrorism Index Ranking and a 117-homicide rate per capita.
This is a result of Al-Shabaab terrorist activities in Kenya and Somalia, leading to deaths and perennial attacks in the country and in the region.
Ethiopia ranked 19th most dangerous country due to the brutal conflict in the Tigray region and a final ceasefire was only agreed in November 2022; if it lasts, then there’s a chance that Ethiopia could drop out of this list.
However, Burkina Faso and South Africa ranked safer that the two countries appearing position 29 and 30 respectively.
According to Yahoo Finance, they determined the most dangerous countries in the world, using multiple sources to produce realistic rankings and consider any biases that a sole source might have.
Initially they considered the ranking of each country based on their score in the latest Global Peace Index (the higher the score, the higher the ranking for our calculation) and the Global Terrorism Index.
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Furthermore, they then considered the average homicide rate of each country from 2006 to 2021 with data from the World Bank.
This led to assigning 40% weightage to the first two criteria, and 20% to the homicide rate criteria. Where homicide rates weren’t available for a country, they calculated their ranking solely on the first two criteria.
This is why despite Ukraine being the second-worst country in the Global Peace Index, it is still extremely safe in terms of crime and terrorism, which is why it isn’t in the most dangerous countries in the world right now.
Moreover, it is also important to remember that often, there is little correlation between terrorism and homicides so both need to be considered to get a true picture of danger.
This explains why some of the countries with the highest homicide rates in the world, most of which are in South and Central America including Honduras, El Salvador, and Venezuela, are not among the most dangerous countries in the world because of their high ranking in the Global Peace Index and low ranking in the Global Terrorism Index.
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Global Peace Index Ranking Criteria
According to the Institute for Economics and Peace that releases yearly Global Peace Index report. This report is the only one of its kind that measures how dangerous or safe a nation is based on 23 different indicators, including political terror, deaths from internal conflict, and murder rate.
Furthermore, the GPI report evaluates 163 countries that account for more than 99.7% of the world’s total population. The factors analyzed in the report are grouped into three different areas: Safety and Security, Ongoing Conflict, and Militarization.
The factors used to compile this report include: the number of internal and external violent conflicts, level of distrust, political instability, potential for terrorist acts, number of homicides, and military expenditures as a percentage of GDP.
A score is calculated for each of the 163 nations featured in the report based on these factors. The higher the score, the more dangerous the country is and the lower it ranks in terms of safety.
