Disaster resilience in the Middle East and North Africa shows a sharp divide between Gulf states and the Levant, with Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine falling well below the global average, according to the latest worldwide risk poll published this month.
The poll, conducted by Gallup for Lloyd's Register Foundation through more than 143,000 interviews in 140 countries and territories in 2025, assesses how well individuals, households, and communities can withstand major shocks and recover.
Kuwait ranked first among countries covered in the regional data with a resilience score of 74 points, followed by Bahrain at 72 and Oman and the United Arab Emirates at 70 each, against a global average score of 57.
Confidence in government preparedness was particularly high in the Gulf. In the UAE, 87% of respondents said the government was well prepared for disasters, the second-highest proportion among the 133 countries included in the resilience index. In Bahrain the figure was 82%.
In contrast, Lebanon scored 48 points on the index, Iraq 49 and Palestine 52. In Lebanon, only 14% of respondents said the government was well prepared for disasters, and just 39% of those affected by a disaster said they received an advance warning, against a global figure of 80%.
Some 59% of Iraqis and 56% of Lebanese said their governments do not care about them at all, compared with a global average of 29%.
More than half of households in Iraq, Jordan and Palestine said they would be unable to cover basic needs for a month if they lost their income.
Lebanon recorded some of the starkest individual risk perceptions in the survey: 71% of respondents expressed concern that drinking water could cause serious harm to their health, placing the country fifth globally on that measure, while 90% said they were worried about violent crime, ranking it sixth worldwide.
North Africa recorded the largest regional improvement, posting a five-point rise on the resilience index since 2023 — the biggest increase of any region in the study.
The report links gains in Algeria and Egypt to wider internet access, improved household preparedness and greater financial capacity to absorb crises.
Despite the region's high temperatures, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE were among the countries least concerned about heatwaves and drought, the report notes. In Israel, the share of the population affected by a disaster during the period covered was under 1%.
Globally, around 1.1 billion adults experienced a disaster in the five years preceding the poll, and nearly 220 million received no advance warning.
The gap between income groups was pronounced: roughly a third of adults in low-income countries reported being affected by a disaster in the previous five years, compared with 16% in high-income states.
Only 64% of those affected in low-income countries received prior warnings, against 84% in high-income nations, and fewer than half of those warned in low-income and lower-middle-income countries took preventive action, compared with 71% in wealthier states.
The number of warning channels also affected behaviour: 37% of those alerted through a single channel took preventive action, rising to 51% for those reached through two and 64% for three, such as text messages, television and social media.
Of the roughly 220 million people worldwide who experienced a disaster without advance warning, 77% owned a mobile phone, representing more than 170 million individuals.