An annual index whose intent is to rank nations by their “peacefulness” in an objective manner. It takes into account not merely the number of persons killed in armed conflicts, but also, for example, the percentage of the population in prison. See:
In the 2014 rankings, the five countries listed as most peaceful (in order) were Iceland, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Switzerland. The five least peaceful countries (least peaceful first) were Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iraq and Somalia.
The Index has been prepared annually by the Institute for Economics and Peace, an nonprofit organization founded in 2008 in Australian, in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit and an independent panel of advisors. The same organization prepares a US Peace Index, a UK Peace Index, a Mexico Peace Index, and a Terrorism Index, all well-presented graphically at the address above.
The indicators are divided into three key thematic categories:
• 5 measures of ongoing conflict such as number of conflicts fought and number
of deaths from organized conflict.
• 10 measures of societal safety and
security such as number of displaced people, potential for terrorist acts,
number of homicides, number of jailed population.
• 7 measures of
militarization such as military expenditure, number of armed service personnel,
ease of access to small arms and light weapons.
The overall score is weighted
60% for internal peace and 40% for external peace. The closer the score is to
‘1’, the more peaceful the country is, with scores closer to ‘5’ indicating
relatively less peace.
http://economicsandpeace.org/about-us/faq. Retrieved 15 April 2015.
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Last revised: 15 March 2008.