UN report says most people worldwide plagued by feelings of insecurity

People feel insecure in almost every country, with six in seven worldwide experiencing feelings of insecurity, according to new figures and analysis released by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) on Tuesday.

Even citizens in countries with some of the best health, wealth, and education outcomes are reporting greater anxiety than a decade ago.

"Despite global wealth being higher than ever before, a majority of people are feeling apprehensive about the future and these feelings have likely been exacerbated by the pandemic," said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner.

"In our quest for unbridled economic growth, we continue to destroy our natural world while inequalities are widening, both within and between countries. It is time to recognize the signs of societies that are under immense stress and redefine what progress actually means."

The report, New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene, calls for greater solidarity across borders to tackle the disconnect between development and perceived security.

UNDP also advocates a new approach to development that it hopes will help people to live free from want, fear, anxiety, and indignity.

"We need a fit-for-purpose development model that is built around the protection and restoration our of planet with new sustainable opportunities for all," said Steiner.

UNDP first introduced the concept of human security in its landmark Human Development Report, issued in 1994.

This study signaled a radical departure from the idea that people's security should be assessed based only on territorial security, but instead take into account their basic needs, dignity, and safety, so they can live a secure life.

UNDP believes the imperative to act now has never been clearer. For a second consecutive year, the pandemic has driven down global life expectancy at birth, as well as other measures of overall human development.

Climate change could also become a leading cause of death worldwide before the end of the century, the authors said, and could cause 40 million deaths even with moderate mitigation of emissions.

The report further examined other threats that have become more prominent in recent years, including those from digital technologies, growing inequalities, conflicts, and the ability of healthcare systems to tackle new challenges like the pandemic.

The authors argued that addressing these threats will require policy makers to consider protection, empowerment, and solidarity alongside one another so that human security, planetary considerations and human development, all work together and not despite each other.

Asako Okai, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the UNDP Crisis Bureau, said the report highlights the need to build a greater sense of global solidarity based on the idea of common security.

"Common security recognizes that a community can only be secure if adjacent communities are too," she explained. "This is something we see all too clearly with the current pandemic: nations are largely powerless to prevent new mutations of this coronavirus from crossing borders."

The report further pointed to the strong association between declining levels of trust and feelings of insecurity. Trust is three times less likely to be found among those with higher levels of perceived human insecurity.

The report also revealed that healthcare systems between countries are widening. A new index in the report showed that healthcare performance inequality between countries with low and very high human development grew between 1995 and 2017.