World Cup fans, Welcome to Qatar, one of the safest countries in the world

For those traveling to Qatar for the World Cup, or just for those thinking of visiting the country as a tourist at some point, the following information may be of interest. For the fourth year in a row, Qatar has been named the safest country in the world according to the Numbeo Crime Index.

While in 2018, Japan was leading this ranking, and the emirate hosting the 2022 World Cup was in second place, since 2019 the situation has changed. Qatar took the lead and has not relinquished it since. According to the popular website Numbeo, the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan round out the podium of the safest countries in the world. At the other end of the scale, Venezuela, Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan, South Africa, and Honduras are the most insecure countries in the world.

This ranking is based on the answers given by website visitors to questionnaires drawn up according to scientific and government survey methods. Numbeo explains its methodology for compiling the rankings:

„This section is based on surveys from visitors of this website. Questions for these surveys are similar to many similar scientific and government surveys.

Each entry in the survey is saved as a number in the range [-2, +2], with -2 meaning strongly negative and +2 meaning strongly positive.

We filter surveys to eliminate potential spam, like people entering a large amount of data which are different from the median value.

To present survey results, we use the scale [0, 100] for values since it is easier to read for users.

To generate a current index (which is always updated) we use data up to 36 months old. We include only cities for which there are at least a certain number of contributors. Our semi-annual index is remade twice per year by pushing the current index into this historical view.

Crime Index is an estimation of the overall level of crime in a given city or country. We consider crime levels lower than 20 as very low, crime levels between 20 and 40 as being low, crime levels between 40 and 60 as being moderate, crime levels between 60 and 80 as being high, and finally crime levels higher than 80 as being very high.

The safety index is, on the other way, quite opposite of the crime index. If the city has a high safety index, it is considered very safe”.

The Numbeo Crime Index, which looks at the level of safety according to the level of crime in a country, is not the only such ranking of the safest countries in the world. The Global Peace Index report compiles its own annual ranking but takes other parameters into account.

There are many factors that affect a country’s domestic safety. The Global Peace Index uses them all as the basis for its annual results, which rank all countries in the world, from safest to least safe, according to their level of security. The report looks at issues such as a country’s potential external and internal conflicts, the type of political regime in power or the extent of common crime, as well as the degree of militarisation of the country, arms purchases or nuclear arsenals.

The three major elements, comprising a total of 23 insecurity and dangerousness indicators, used for this study are open internal and international conflicts, the degree of social security, and the militarization of the country.

According to the ranking, Iceland is the safest country in the world, followed by New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, and Austria. Qatar is ranked only 23rd, ahead of Sweden, Australia, Spain, Taiwan, Romania, and Estonia, among others.

The world’s most insecure countries also have another ranking, according to the Global Peace Index. The top 5 look like this: 1. Afghanistan, 2. Yemen, 3. Syria, 4. Russia, 5.

So in the second top, countries that have armies, are part of military alliances (such as NATO or similar), that invest in security are “penalized”, and this factor is one that “drags down” the final ranking. The Numbeo Crime Index, on the other hand, does not take this into account, but only considers the ultimate safety of the citizen, whether a resident or a tourist of the countries concerned.

Finally, a third ranking, compiled by Global Finance Magazine, places Qatar in 3rd place in the top safest countries, behind only Iceland and the United Arab Emirates, but ahead of countries like Singapore and Finland, which complete the top 5.

So, in any global ranking, Qatar is one of the safest countries in the world, which is good news for the people of Qatar and should be good news for any tourist planning to visit the small Persian Gulf emirate.