The 17 most unsafe cities in Europe

And every year Mercer, one of the world's largest HR consultancy firms, releases its Quality of Living Index, which also shows where are the safest cities in the world to live and work.

The ranking is one of the most comprehensive of its kind and is carried out annually to help multinational companies and other employers to compensate employees fairly when placing them on international assignments, according to Mercer.

Mercer says that the personal safety ranking is based the cities' "relationship with other countries, internal stability, crime and law enforcement." In other words, it comes as no surprise that war-torn cities or those rife with crime rank the lowest.

Mercer looked at 450 cities across the globe and then made a list of 230 countries that are the safest for workers. While a whole host of European cities top the list for being safest in the world, there are some that surprisingly rank very low in the index.

Business Insider took at the bottom of the list in order to find the 17 most unsafe cities in Europe.