Measuring peacefulness. Did you know we can measure countries level of peacefulness? It is a very interesting study that considers several factors of a country’s life. The study is released every year and today I am going to show you the latest results.
Global Peace Index
The Global Peace Index is a statistics prepared by the Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP), which is an organisation based in Sydney that tries to evaluate countries according to their level of peacefulness. It is not an easy task and a lot of factors are taken into account, such as security, crime and military activity, etc.
A new study is released every year and it is prepared by evaluating the country according to three main focal points: safety and security, level of involvement in domestic and international conflicts and militarisation.
2020 in a nutshell
According to the Global Peace Index, the global level of peacefulness has fallen an average of 0.34% per country. The report shows that since 2008 global peacefulness has declined 2.8%. But is not all bad news, from all the countries evaluated (99.7% of the global population), 81 countries have improved their rating, last year. 80 countries have lower ratings. The report says that conflicts and crisis that emerged in the past decade have started to ease, but they were replaced by the uncertainty brought by the pandemic.
The most peaceful
In 2020, and since 2008, Iceland was rated the most peaceful country in the world. It is followed by New Zealand, Austria, Portugal and Denmark. Australia is rated in 13th place. The United Kingdom is rated in 42nd place and the United States rated in 121st place. These results may reflect their militarisation and involvement in international conflicts.
The least peaceful
For the second year in a row, Afghanistan has been rated the least peaceful country in the world. It is followed by Syria Iraq, South Sudan and Yemen. These countries, except for Yemen, have been at the bottom of the list since 2015.
Let’s all hope the we all improve and we have a much more peaceful world in the future.