How Safe Is Each Country? One Measure, Same Rules
"I would like one number, the same for every place."
Picture a widow named Clementine, 70, who keeps a list on her refrigerator of countries she might live in. At a dinner, a neighbor said a country on her list was "dangerous." Another guest said the same country was "lovely and calm." Clementine went home and called her daughter, Yara.
"Everyone has an opinion," she said. "I would like one number, the same for every place."
Yara found one, a score with limits worth knowing.
One measure, applied the same way
We used a single measure for every country: the Global Peace Index 2026, from the Institute for Economics and Peace, published in June 2026. It ranks 163 countries. A lower score means more peaceful. We list every country on Clementine's refrigerator in the same way, plus the United States for comparison. Every row gets the same two columns.
| Country (2026) | Rank (of 163) | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Portugal | 7 | 1.427 |
| Spain | 27 | 1.654 |
| Greece | 53 | 1.828 |
| Costa Rica | 62 | 1.860 |
| Panama | 81 | 1.976 |
| Thailand | 101 | 2.089 |
| United States | 134 | 2.535 |
| Ecuador | 135 | 2.539 |
| Mexico | 139 | 2.650 |
| Colombia | 141 | 2.735 |
For scale, the country at the top of the index, Iceland, scores 1.161. Some travel blogs print ranks that differ from these, often from earlier years. This table follows the 2026 poster from the institute.
What the number cannot tell her
Clementine read the table twice. "My own country is ranked 134," she said. "Next to Ecuador."
"And I live in a city where I walk to the library at night without a thought," Yara said.
That is one limit. A national score is an average over a whole country. It blends cities, small towns, borders and coasts into one figure. Within any country on the list, places differ from one another, and some neighborhoods differ from the next street. The score also describes a country, and a retiree's Tuesday happens on one street. We do not call any country safe or dangerous here. The table shows how one group of researchers ranked each country on one scale.
We left out the US State Department advisory levels. The levels in circulation come from secondary reports, some of them dated. The advisory text is worth reading in full. For Mexico, a news report says it names particular states and notes that conditions vary even within the same state.
You could…
- Read the State Department's advisory text for the particular country and the region you have in mind, on the official travel site.
- Ask the nearest United States embassy or consulate how its advisory applies to the city you have in mind.
- Spend a month in the neighborhood, at different hours, before signing a lease.
- Ask people already living there, in groups of retirees from abroad and with neighbors, what their week feels like.
What did you notice about everyday safety in the place you live now or the place you visited? Share it below. Someone choosing a street in that same place may find your answer useful.
Figures are estimates for planning, based on public data. Rules change, so each figure shows the year it applies to; ask the official office before you act.
Sources: Institute for Economics and Peace, Global Peace Index 2026 (June 2026); US Department of State travel advisories (travel.state.gov), to be read directly.
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