Revealed: The 12 most dangerous countries in the world

El Salvador comes in last place, while Finland is rated the most safe

A soldier paints over graffiti associated with the Mara Salvatrucha gang in Quezaltepeque, a town 15 km from San Salvador, in an operation to take back gang-controlled neighborhoods (Getty Images)

El Salvador has been named as the least safe and secure country in the world, according to a report by the World Economic Forum.

The epicentre of central America’s gang crisis, it has one of the highest crime rates in the world, and last year became the most deadly country outside a warzone after its murder rate soared to 104 per 100,000 citizens.

Latin American countries dominate the list, with Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico suffering from similar gang-related issues to El Salvador, and Colombia and Venezuela also included in the top 10.

Four African countries rank among the most dangerous, including Kenya and Egypt, both of which are struggling with active Islamist insurgencies on their fringes.

And the top 12 is completed by Yemen in the Middle East and Pakistan, which continues to battle the Taliban.

The list makes up part of the WEF’s Global Competitiveness Report 2016/17, which ranks 138 countries based on a broad range of factors to assess their relative productivity and prosperity.

As such, countries like Syria, Iraq and South Sudan do not appear on the list at all, because they have been so ravaged by war that they no longer have functioning economies.

Finland ranked top of all countries for security, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Iceland and Rwanda, a country which has undergone a remarkable transformation since the 1994 genocide.

The UK ranks 34th for security in the list, sandwiched between Bahrain above and Malta below, and some way ahead of Germany in 58th.

The US ranks 60th, France is down in 62nd, and the lowest European country is Ukraine, in 123rd.

Klaus Schwab, the founder of the WEF, said on the release of the report at the end of last month that the world had undergone a 10-year fall in openness, seen across a range of factors, which was damaging the world’s ability to innovate and grow “at all stages of development”.

“Declining openness in the global economy is harming competitiveness and making it harder for leaders to drive sustainable, inclusive growth,” he said.