Physical Safety and Security: A Proposal for Internationally Comparable Indicators of Violence

Violence impedes human freedom to live safely and securely, and can sustain poverty traps in many communities. A key challenge for academics, policy-makers and practitioners working broadly in programmes aimed at poverty alleviation, including violence prevention, is the lack of reliable and comparable data on the incidence and nature of violence. This paper proposes a household survey module for a multidimensional poverty questionnaire that can be used to complement the available data on the incidence of violence against property and the person, as well as perceptions of security and safety. Violence and poverty are inextricably linked, although the direction of causality is contested if not circular. The module uses standardized definitions that are clear, can be translated cross-culturally and clearly disaggregate different types of interpersonal violence, thereby bridging the crime-conflict nexus.