Who is the most peaceful of all?
There are so many kinds of indices – that of Happiness, that of Ease of Doing Business, that of being the best, the richest… the list is long. And now there is another one and pretty amazing index at that!
This is the world’s most peaceful countries to live in. Compiled by Global Peace Index, it has been issued by the IEP (Institute for Economics and Peace) and is a measurement of nations’ and regions’ peacefulness based on external and internal measures. With every place fraught with danger and unrest, it comes as a surprise to know that it found 20 peaceful countries! It is composed of 22 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources, which gauge three broad themes: the level of safety and security in society; the extent of domestic or international conflict; and the degree of militarisation. The 2013 GPI has been expanded to rank 162 independent states and updated with the latest available figures and information.
The index has again been topped by Iceland with the ten highest ranking nations in the GPI being all relatively small, stable democracies. Nordic and Alpine countries are particularly well represented. Asia-Pacific is also represented at the top, with New Zealand at 3rd and Japan at 6th. The most peaceful region of the world continues to be Europe while the least peaceful region is South Asia. Afghanistan this year returns to the bottom of the GPI, partly due to increases in political instability and terrorist activity. It replaces Somalia which experienced a slightly more peaceful year and moved up from the lowest position in the GPI for the first time in two years.
A very important finding of the index is that countries with small and medium populations - one million to twenty five million - consistently score the highest average level of peace. While very large countries, with populations over 100 million, consistently record the lowest levels of peace.
The three countries that had the greatest improvements in peace over the last six years are Chad, Georgia and Haiti while the three countries with the greatest deterioration are Syria, Libya and Rwanda. USA comes in at number 100, followed by China at 101 and India comes much lower at 141 and the least peaceful is Afghanistan at 162.
For more insight into this wonderful index, you can follow this link
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/pdf/gpi/2013_Global_Peace_Index_Report.pdf