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What makes a country’s citizens safe and secure? Low crime rates? Freedom of political expression? Absence of civil and ethnic unrest? The Legatum Institute says all of the above, and its latest Prosperity Index assesses each of these factors to determine global rankings for national security and personal safety. The Diplomat is pleased to present the combined safety and security rankings for the Asia-Pacific, which take into account everything from how safe Asia’s citizens feel walking home at night to how free they feel to express their political views.
10Kazakhstan
Squeaking into the top 10 safest places in the Asia-Pacific, Kazakhstan is a country that benefits from low levels of emigration among professionals, intellectuals, political dissidents and the middle class.
Personal safety is also good, with just 3.7 percent of respondents reporting having been assaulted in the year prior to the 2009 survey, while only 10.8 percent reported they'd had experience of theft. Still, almost half of the country’s citizens don’t feel safe walking alone at night. Kazakhs also suffer a moderate level of repression from state-sponsored political violence, with relatively few people feeling safe expressing their political views—the country ranks 79th globally on this variable.
Photo: Anastassiya Lukyanova
