Karachi among top 60 safest cities

A report by The Economist Intelligence Unit has placed Karachi in a list comprising 60 of the world's safest cities. 

The Safe Cities Index 2017, comprising of 60 cities, places Tokyo at the top and Karachi at the bottom of the list. 

“Although it performs poorly across all of the categories, it was dragged down by a very low level of personal security (60th). This is a reflection of a number of factors, but the main reason is that among the cities in the index, it experiences by far the most frequent and most severe terrorist attacks,” the report said about Karachi.

Asia and the Middle East and Africa dominate the bottom of the index, with Dhaka and Yangon just above Karachi. “Of the ten cities at the bottom of the overall index, three are in South-east Asia (Manila, Ho Chi Minh City and Jakarta), two are in South Asia (Dhaka and Karachi) and two are in the Middle East and Africa (Cairo and Tehran).”

The top 10 safest cities are mostly from Europe (Madrid, Barcelona, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Zurich) or Asia-Pacific (Singapore, Wellington, Hong Kong, Melbourne and Sydney). No US city appears in the top 10 list, while San Francisco is the 20th safest city in the world according to the report.

The report rated the 60 countries on the basis of four categories, namely, digital security, health security, personal security and infrastructure security.

“In 2017 only one city in the developing world cracks the top half of the index, Buenos Aires, which places 29th, between two Middle Eastern cities, Abu Dhabi (28th) and Doha (30th). Two other Middle Eastern cities, Jeddah (42nd) and Riyadh (47th), are the worst performing of the 21 cities from the developed world, having scored below average in all of the four categories and particularly poorly in the infrastructure and personal security categories,” the report adds.