Public perceptions towards public safety, internal and external threats

The first chapter of the report presents the perceptions on how safe citizens’ feel in Kosovo and their respective communities do. Moreover, the public safety chapter includes the citizens’ perception on different issues that potentially endanger the community and how much of a threat the citizens’ perceive those issues. On the other hand, the second chapter consists of citizens’ perceptions on what are the key internal and external threats to the national security of Kosovo and presents their opinion on how much of a threat do several issues present to the security of Kosovo. The key findings of this report are:

• Respondents feel safe in their immediate communities. However, the results show a tendency for the feeling of insecurity to slightly increase as respondents expand from their immediate communities;
• When asked to identify a threat posed to the community without stating pre-defined options of what the potential threats would be, the majority of respondents (43 percent) declared that there are no threats at all at their respective communities;
• When presented with pre-defined options of different phenomena that potentially endanger the community, 64 percent of the respondents believe that the emigration of Kosovo citizens’ is a high threat or a very high threat for the community;
• When asked to identify the key internal national security threats, without pre-defined options on what the potential threats would be, 24 percent of the respondents listed corruption/nepotism as the key internal threat;
• When presented with pre-defined options of different phenomena that potentially endanger the national security of Kosovo, 88 percent of respondents share the opinion that unemployment is a high threat or very high threat for the national security of Kosovo;
• In regard to external national security threats, 44 percent of the respondent believe that Serbia is the largest external security threat for Kosovo.

This report is published in the framework of the regional project "Western Balkans Security Barometer" supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The views presented in this report are perceptions of the respondents and do not necessarily represent the views of Kosovar Centre for Security Studies and Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. Opinions expressed in this report do not necessarily represent the views of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).