The least safe countries in the world for women in 2017 included the likes of Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Syria.

The UAE is the safest country for women in the Middle East region, which will help in the growth of the country's wealth in the next 10 years, reveals a new report releasedon Tuesday.

Womansafety has become very topical over the past year, following several high profile celebrity assault cases in the US. Notably,woman safety is one of the best ways to gauge a country's long-term wealth growth potential, with a correlation of 92 per cent between historic wealth growth andwomansafety levels. This means that wealth growth is boosted by strong levels ofwomansafety in a country,saidAndrew Amoils,Head of Research,New World Wealth.

"Most of the countries in the top 10 are also popular destinations for migrating high net worth individuals. Also, most of them have experienced strong wealth growth over the past 10-20 years," said Amoils, the author of the report.

Globally, Australia, Malta, Iceland, New Zealand, Canada, Poland, Monaco, USA and South Korea have been ranked the safest countries for women worldwide.

 

Regionally, Malta, Poland, Monaco, and Islands are safest for women in Europe; Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Japan and South Korea in Asia-Pacific; Mauritius, Botswana and Namibia in Africa; and USA and Canada in Americas.

"We expect emerging markets with good woman safety levels to be some of the world's top performers in terms of wealth growth over the next 10 years. For instance, countries such as Mauritius and Sri Lanka (which have good levels of woman safety) are both expected to perform very well (in terms of wealth growth) going forward,"Amoilssaid.

The least safe countries in the world for women in 2017 included the likes of Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Syria. Some of the world's big economies such as Nigeria also made the list.

Amoils noted that most of these markets have performed poorly in terms of wealth growth over the past few years, which is probably linked to their low woman safety levels. Furthermore, many of the migrant boats crossing the Med to Europe had a large number of citizens from these countries on them which shows that people are fleeing these countries in search of safer places to live.

Crimes considered in this study include rape, slavery of woman, trafficking of woman and general assaults on woman such as physical assaults, acids attacks etc.

The study showed thatout of the 195 countries in the world, only 58 have reasonably reliable crime statistics.