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The Global Finance ranking of the world’s safest countries for 2021 ranked the Philippines at the bottom of the barrel of 134 countries.

The Philippines’ dismal performance was consistent in the international business magazine’s annual ranking, remaining at the bottom of the list just like in the 2019 list which then evaluated 128 nations.

The magazine took into account three fundamental factors to determine the countries safety scores – war and peace, personal security, and natural disaster risk which included factors stemming from Covid-19.

“Countries with serious civil conflict that have high risks from natural disaster such as the Philippines, Nigeria, Yemen and El Salvador all reported relatively low death tolls from Covid-19, yet performed poorly in terms of safety overall,” the publication said.

Our country’s score of 14.8899 was just a few decimal points higher than Colombia which is a missed opportunity for a government that has a tendency to trumpet any improvement, however slight, as a victory.

Iceland topped the list as the safest country with an index score of 3.9724. Singapore, the model country in terms of safety, ranked 4th in the list. Given our inability to show any improvement from being a consistent bottom dweller, the Philippines obviously has a long way to go before even coming close to being perceived as among the world’s top safest countries.

If equalling the safety ranking of a top ten country is not possible given the massive discrepancy, perhaps our government should simply lower our goalposts and aim for getting out of the ranking’s bottom ten instead. Instead of becoming like Singapore, perhaps we can just try to beat Yemen, Nigeria or El Salvador in next year’s rankings.*

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March 2024
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