Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

The safety and security research is generally presented as a problem of two levels. The first level is focused on individuals and social groups while the second level deals with the safety and security issues on a country level. Research on both levels, however, is very often concentrated on the life or health threat in direct connection with war conflicts, terrorism, organised crime, political or social persecution and natural disasters. Nevertheless, such understanding and evaluation of safety and security does not comply with the present reality. There exist a wide range of scientific studies proving that the present understanding of human safety and security consists of several dimensions which might not be directly linked to actual war activities. The human safety and security of people in a broad sense could be jeopardized also by unfair practices or abuse of political power by governmental bodies, corruption in national economies, discrimination of minorities, drugs and black markets. The threat to the safety and security of individuals and countries is a multidimensional problem and its scope, intensity and dynamics should be measured by adequate tools and should be understood as a standard dimension of the quality of life. A specific tool should be adopted for measuring the safety and security in people´s life and for measuring safety and security on a country level. Current statistical and other exact methods enable researchers to perform qualitative and quantitative measurements and evaluate the safety and security in a broad scope and with needed depth and qualification. The aim of this paper is to review present trends in the measurement of the safety and security levels in context with actual impacts of external threats from international war conflicts, terrorist attacks and corruption practices and to underline the activities of countries and the international community to stop, or to reduce such threats. To measure these dimensions of safety and security, some selected indexes and indicators of international standards will be used. Our aim is to demonstrate their application in mapping and evaluating the safety and security situation within the European Union countries and particular attention to the performance of Slovakia.