Global Peace Index

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World map of the Global Peace Index. Countries appearing more blue are ranked as more peaceful on the Index, countries appearing more red are ranked as less peaceful.

The Global Peace Index (GPI) is an attempt to measure the relative position of nations’ and regions’ peacefulness. It is maintained by the Institute for Economics and Peace and developed in consultation with an international panel of peace experts from peace institutes and think tanks, together with the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, Australia with data analysed by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The list was launched first in May 2007 and then recently in May 2008 and is claimed to be the first study to rank countries around the world according to their peacefulness. The study is the brainchild of Australian entrepreneur Steve Killelea and is endorsed by individuals such as the Dalai Lama, archbishop Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Yunus, economist Jeffrey Sachs, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and former US president Jimmy Carter. Factors examined by the authors include internal factors such as levels of violence and crime within the country and factors in a country's external relations such as military expenditure and wars.

[edit] Methodology

The research team was headed by The Economist Intelligence Unit in conjunction with academics and experts in the field of peace. They measured countries' peacefulness based on wide range of indicators, 24 in all. A table of the indicators is below.^[1] In the table, UCDP stands for the Uppsala Conflict Data Program maintained by the University of Uppsala in Sweden, EIU for The Economist Intelligence Unit, UNSCT for the United Nations Survey of Criminal Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, ICPS is the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London, IISS for the International Institute for Strategic Studies publication The Military Balance 2007, SIPRI for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Arms Transfers Database, and BICC for the Bonn International Center for Conversion.

#	Indicator	Source	Year(s)	Coding
1	Number of external and internal wars fought	UCDP	2000 to 2005	Total number^[2]
2	Estimated deaths due to external wars	UCDP	2004 to 2005	Total number^[2]
3	Estimated deaths due to internal wars	UCDP	2004 to 2005	Total number^[2]
4	Level of organized internal conflict	EIU	2007	Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5
5	Relations with neighbouring countries	EIU	2007	Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5
6	Level of distrust in other citizens	EIU	2007	Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5
7	Number of displaced persons as percentage of population	World Bank	2003	Refugee population by percentage of the origin country's population
8	Political instability	EIU	2007	Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5
9	Level of respect for human rights (political terror scale)	Amnesty International	2005	Qualitative measure
10	Potential for terrorist acts	EIU	2007	Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5
11	Number of homicides	UNSCT	2004 and 2002	Intentional homicides, including infanticide, per 100,000 people
12	Level of violent crime	EIU	2007	Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5
13	Likelihood of violent demonstrations	EIU	2007	Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5
14	Number of jailed persons	ICPS	2006	Persons incarcerated per 100,000 people
15	Number of police and security officers	UNSCT	2002 and 2000	Civil security officers per 100,000 people^[3]
16	Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP	IISS	2004	Cash outlays for armed forces, as a percentage of GDP^[4]
17	Number of armed services personnel	IISS	2004	Full-time military personnel per 100,000 people
18	Imports of major conventional weapons	SIPRI	2001 to 2005	Imports of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people^[5]
19	Exports of major conventional weapons	SIPRI	2001 to 2005	Exports of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people^[5]
20	United Nations deployments	IISS	2006 to 2007	Total number
21	Non-United Nations deployments	IISS	2006 to 2007	Total number
22	Number of heavy weapons	BICC	2003	Weapons per 100,000 people^[6]
23	Ease of access to small arms and light weapons	EIU	2007	Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5
24	Military capability or sophistication	EIU	2007	Qualitative scale, ranked 1 to 5

Indicators not already ranked on a 1 to 5 scale were converted by using the following formula: x=(x-Min(x))/(Max(x)-Min(x)) where Max(x) and Min(x) are the highest and lowest values for that indicator of the countries ranked in the index. The 0 to 1 scores that resulted were then converted to the 1 to 5 scale. Individual indicators were then weighted according to the research team's judgment of their importance. The scores were then tabulated into two weighted sub-indices: internal peace, weighted at 60% of a country's final score, and external peace, weighted at 40% of a country's final score.^[7]

The main findings of the Global Peace Index are:

Peace correlated to indicators such as income, schooling and the level of regional integration
Peaceful countries often shared high levels of transparency of government and low corruption
Small, stable countries which are part of regional blocks are most likely to get a higher ranking.^[8]

Statistical analysis was applied to discover more specific drivers of peace. Specifically, the research team looked for indicators that were included and excluded from the index that had high levels of correlation with the overall score and rank of countries. Among the statistically significant indicators that were not used in the analysis were the functionality of a country's government, regional integration, hostility to foreigners, importance of religion in national life, and GDP per capita.^[9]

Notably absent from the 2007 study are Belarus, Iceland, many African nations, Mongolia, North Korea and Afghanistan. They were not included because reliable data for the 24 indicators was not available.^[10]

[edit] Criticism and response to criticism

The Economist, in publishing the index, admitted that, "the index will run into some flak." Specifically, according to The Economist, the weighting of military expenditure "may seem to give heart to freeloaders: countries that enjoy peace precisely because others (often the USA) care for their defense." The true utility of the index may lie not in its specific rankings of countries now, but in how those rankings change over time, thus tracking when and how countries become more or less peaceful.^[11]

The Peace Index has been criticised for not including indicators specifically relating to violence against women and children. Riane Eisler, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, argued that, "to put it mildly, this blind spot makes the index very inaccurate." She mentions a number of specific cases, including Egypt, where she claims 90% of women are subject to genital mutilation, China, where, she says, "female infanticide is still a problem," and Chile, where 26% of women "suffered at least one episode of violence by a partner, according to a 2000 UNICEF study."^[12]

The Index has received endorsements from a number of major international figures, including the Dalai Lama, archbishop Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Yunus and former United States President Jimmy Carter.^[13] Steve Killelea, the Australian philanthropist who conceived the idea of the Index and created a definition for the Peace Industry, argues that the Index "is a wake-up call for leaders around the globe."^[14]

[edit] 2007-2008 Global Peace Index rankings

Nations considered more peaceful have lower index scores. Countries with rankings in green are in the most peaceful 20% for that year; those in red are in the bottom 20%.^[15]

Country	2008 Rank	2008 Score	2007 Rank	2007 Score	2007–2008 Change
Iceland	1	1.176
Denmark	2	1.343	3	1.377	+01
Norway	3	1.343	1	1.357	−02
New Zealand	4	1.350	2	1.363	−02
Japan	5	1.358	5	1.413	0
Ireland	6	1.410	4	1.396	−02
Portugal	7	1.412	9	1.481	+02
Finland	8	1.432	6	1.447	−02
Luxembourg	9	1.446
Austria	10	1.449	10	1.483	0
Canada	11	1.451	8	1.481	−03
Switzerland	12	1.465	14	1.526	+02
Sweden	13	1.468	7	1.478	−06
Germany	14	1.475	12	1.523	−02
Belgium	15	1.485	11	1.498	−04
Slovenia	16	1.491	15	1.539	−01
Czech Republic	17	1.501	13	1.524	−04
Hungary	18	1.576	18	1.575	0
Chile	19	1.576	16	1.568	−03
Slovakia	20	1.576	17	1.571	−03
Uruguay	21	1.606	24	1.661	+03
Netherlands	22	1.607	20	1.620	−02
Hong Kong	23	1.608	23	1.657	0
Romania	24	1.611	26	1.682	+02
Oman	25	1.612	22	1.641	−03
Bhutan	26	1.616	19	1.611	−07
Australia	27	1.652	25	1.664	−02
Italy	28	1.653	33	1.724	+05
Singapore	29	1.673	29	1.692	0
Spain	30	1.683	21	1.633	−09
Poland	31	1.687	27	1.683	−04
South Korea	32	1.691	32	1.719	0
Qatar	33	1.694	30	1.702	−03
Costa Rica	34	1.701	31	1.702	−03
Estonia	35	1.702	28	1.684	−07
France	36	1.707	34	1.729	−02
Vietnam	37	1.720	35	1.729	−02
Malaysia	37	1.721	37	1.744	0
Latvia	39	1.723	47	1.848	+08
Ghana	40	1.723	40	1.765	0
Lithuania	41	1.723	43	1.788	+02
United Arab Emirates	42	1.745	38	1.747	−04
Madagascar	43	1.770	41	1.766	−02
Taiwan	44	1.779	36	1.731	−08
Kuwait	45	1.786	46	1.818	+01
Botswana	46	1.792	42	1.786	−04
Tunisia	47	1.797	39	1.762	−08
Panama	48	1.797	45	1.798	−03
United Kingdom	49	1.801
Mozambique	50	1.803	50	1.909	0
Laos	51	1.810
Cyprus	52	1.847	51	1.915	−01
Zambia	53	1.856	53	1.930	0
Greece	54	1.867	44	1.791	−10
Gabon	55	1.878	56	1.952	+01
Argentina	56	1.895	52	1.923	+01
Bulgaria	57	1.903	54	1.936	−03
Tanzania	58	1.919	57	1.966	−01
Nicaragua	59	1.919	66	2.020	+07
Croatia	60	1.926	67	2.030	+07
Libya	61	1.927	58	1.967	−03
Cuba	62	1.954	59	1.968	−03
Morocco	63	1.954	48	1.893	−15
Equatorial Guinea	64	1.964	71	2.059	+07
Jordan	65	1.969	63	1.997	−02
Bosnia and Herzegovina	66	1.974	75	2.089	+09
China	67	1.981	60	1.980	−07
Indonesia	68	1.983	78	2.111	+10
Egypt	69	1.987	73	2.068	+04
Paraguay	70	1.997	55	1.946	−15
Senegal	71	2.011	65	2.017	−06
Kazakhstan	72	2.018	61	1.995	−11
Malawi	73	2.024	68	2.038	−05
Bahrain	74	2.025	62	1.995	−12
Syria	75	2.027	77	2.106	+02
Rwanda	76	2.030
Namibia	77	2.042	64	2.003	−13
Bolivia	78	2.043	69	2.052	−09
Albania	79	2.044
Peru	80	2.046	70	2.056	−10
Burkina Faso	81	2.062
Dominican Republic	82	2.069	74	2.071	−08
Moldova	83	2.091	72	2.059	−11
Ukraine	84	2.096	80	2.150	−04
Serbia	85	2.110	84	2.181	−01
Bangladesh	86	2.118	86	2.219	0
Republic of Macedonia	87	2.119	82	2.170	−05
Mongolia	88	2.155
El Salvador	89	2.163	89	2.244	0
Brazil	90	2.168	83	2.173	−07
Cambodia	91	2.179	85	2.197	−06
Cameroon	92	2.182	76	2.093	−16
Mexico	93	2.191	79	2.125	−14
Belarus	94	2.194
Papua New Guinea	95	2.224	88	2.223	−07
Jamaica	96	2.226	81	2.164	−15
United States of America	97	2.227	96	2.317	−01
Trinidad and Tobago	98	2.230	94	2.286	−04
Mali	99	2.238
Ecuador	100	2.274	87	2.219	−13
Azerbaijan	101	2.287	101	2.448	0
Turkmenistan	102	2.302
Guatemala	103	2.328	93	2.285	−10
Honduras	104	2.335	98	2.390	−06
Iran	105	2.341	97	2.320	−08
Yemen	106	2.352	95	2.309	−11
India	107	2.355	109	2.530	+02
Saudi Arabia	108	2.357	90	2.246	−18
Haiti	109	2.362
Angola	110	2.364	112	2.587	+02
Uzbekistan	111	2.377	110	2.542	−01
Algeria	112	2.378	107	2.503	−05
Philippines	113	2.385	100	2.428	−13
Uganda	114	2.391	104	2.489	−10
Turkey	115	2.403	92	2.272	−23
South Africa	116	2.412	99	2.399	−17
Republic of the Congo	117	2.417
Thailand	118	2.424	105	2.491	−13
Kenya	119	2.429	91	2.258	−28
Mauritania	120	2.435
Ethiopia	121	2.439	103	2.479	−18
Cote d'Ivoire	122	2.451	113	2.638	−09
Venezuela	123	2.505	102	2.453	−21
Zimbabwe	124	2.513	106	2.495	−18
Sri Lanka	125	2.584	111	2.575	−14
Myanmar	126	2.590	108	2.524	−18
Democratic Republic of the Congo	128	2.707
Nigeria	129	2.724	117	2.898	−12
Colombia	130	2.757	116	2.770	−14
Russia	131	2.777	118	2.903	−13
Lebanon	132	2.840	114	2.662	−18
North Korea	133	2.850
Central African Republic	134	2.857
Chad	135	3.007
Israel	136	3.052	119	3.033	−17
Afghanistan	137	3.126
Sudan	138	3.189	120	3.182	−18
Somalia	139	3.293
Iraq	140	3.514	121	3.437	−19