Economy

The Most Lawless Nation in the World

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Every year, research firm Gallup releases its Global Law and Order report. The 2022 edition covers results from 2021. Underdeveloped nations are always at the bottom of the list of 120 countries. This year, the country with the worst score is Afghanistan.

The report is based on several questions that are put to over 127,000 people. They are meant to determine the attitude of those queried on four things: do people trust the police in the place where they live, do they feel safe walking alone at night, have they or members of their household had property stolen in the past 12 months, and during the past 12 months have they been “assaulted or mugged”?

The report’s authors wrote: “The results show these measures remained mostly stable between 2020 and 2021.” Scores on walking alone and trust in local police dropped slightly.

Countries were scored on a scale of 1 to 100. Afghanistan’s score was 51. Gabon and Venezuela were also at the bottom of the list.

The nation with the best score was Singapore, at 96. The United States was not even in the top 10.

Afghanistan is one of the most war-torn countries in the world. The radically Islamic fundamentalist Taliban controls the government. The group emerged as a militant source during the Afghan Civil War, which ran from 1992 through 1996.


The World Factbook shows that Afghanistan has a population of 38.3 million, virtually all Muslim. Over 90% of them are Sunni and the rest are Shia. Life expectancy at birth is about 53 years. That is about 15 years younger than the comparable figure in the United States.


Afghanistan is remarkably poor. Gross domestic product per capita is $2,000, ranking it 214th among all nations. The unemployment rate is almost 25%.

There is nothing about Afghanistan’s situation that will make it move up the Gallup list. By Gallup’s yardsticks, the nation is doomed to lawlessness.

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