Global Peace Index: Safety in Latin America
The Global Peace Index (GPI), released yearly by the nonprofit Institute for Economics and Peace, serves as a widely acknowledged barometer to gauge safety across countries.
Drawing from over 20 meticulously curated metrics, the GPI examines areas such as perceived criminality, police presence, incidence of homicides and robberies, and even terrorist activities.
For the South American context, this translates to none of its nations breaching the top quarter on the global scale, yet an admirable six feature within the top 50%.
Is the GPI the most unerring tool to gauge a nation’s safety? It’s debatable. While it offers valuable insights by weighing 23 distinct data points including political instability, militarisation, and ecological threats, it is not without its challenges.
Ideal assessments might also consider specialized datasets like the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report, emphasizing a tourist’s perspective.
Nevertheless, given the dynamism of the South American region and a world recovering from a pandemic, the GPI, flaws and all, remains one of the most reliable indices for discerning safety in Latin America currently.
