Physical safety

This dimension focuses on security from violence to property and person, as well as perceptions of violence.

Violence undoes the development gains achieved in areas such as education, health, employment, income generation and infrastructure provision. Further, it impedes human freedom to live safely and securely, and can sustain poverty traps in many communities.

Violence is not inevitable to human interaction. Most multi-ethnic, multi-religious and poor people live in peace. However, people’s perceptions of insecurity do not always accord with measured levels of violence.

There is a need for reliable and comparable data on violence against both person and property, and on perceived violence levels, to inform our understanding of  these concepts and the relationships between them.

The missing dimensions modules have been implemented and integrated into multi-topic household surveys. Read more about how they have been used in projects around the world.

Related reading

Diprose, R. (2007). ‘Safety and security: A proposal for internationally comparable indicators of violence’, OPHI Working Paper 1, University of Oxford. An abridged Spanish version of this paper is available here.