What makes a country peaceful? What threatens its peacefulness? After last week’s insight on the Global Peace Index and how it works, this week we will examine the countries with the highest and lowest scores and the reasons behind such numbers. For the thirteenth year in a row, Iceland remains in first position, representing a model to look up to for everyone. It obtained a general score of 1.1, with scores below 2 for each one of the 23 indicators. For example, it scores 1 in Militarisation, as it does not have a standing army: not even members of the police forces carry weapons! The Ongoing Conflict domain has a score of 1 too, as Iceland is not engaged in any international conflict and has not suffered from terrorist attacks.
But how has Iceland managed to be in the lead for so long? The answer is quite simple: Iceland is the living proof that focusing on peace is the key to growth. Iceland cares about its people and therefore puts their wellbeing before profit. And of course, when people feel like their government is looking after them and it can guarantee their rights, they will live in a more peaceful way. In Iceland people treat each other equally, despite their gender, sexual orientation, religion, or class. The country is also first in the world in terms of gender equality, with women actively taking part in politics and in the country’s economic welfare.
It is interesting to observe that the 10 most peaceful countries (Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Portugal, Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Czech Republic, Canada) share some characteristics: most of them have high levels of educations, youth employment, universal healthcare, proving once again that people’s happiness and safeguard are crucial to a country’s level of peace. Moving to the bottom of the chart, the 5 less peaceful countries are Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
But why are they at the bottom of the chart? All of them are countries deeply marked by conflicts and their side effects, such as unstable governments, poverty, and lack of human rights. Iraq is number 159 of 163 and it has recorded the largest improvements. Only last year Iraq was two positions below, but it has improved in Militarisation, recording a fall in military expenditure, UN Peacekeeping funding, weapons imports, and in Ongoing Conflicts. It records an impressive improvement in the number of deaths from internal conflict, falling from over 15,000 in 2014 to less than a thousand in 2019.
South Sudan remains at number 160 and, despite the high levels of internal conflict, it recorded a slight increase in peacefulness. Since the beginning of the civil war in 2013, it recorded an estimated number of 400,000 people and it has an estimated number of 2.27 million refugees and asylum seekers. Although there was a peace agreement in 2018, marking the official ending of the war, general peace in the country is far from being reached. The third less peaceful country in the world is Syria, that moved up of one position from the past year. It has recorded slight improvements in political instability and the number of deaths from internal conflicts. Despite this, the situation in the country is still quite dramatic. Syria has an estimated number of 5.6 million registered refugees and 6.2 million IDPs and, besides the raging civil war that began in 2011, it has also suffered from several terrorist attacks by ISIS and clashes between ISIS and the militant groups Hey’at Tahrir al-Sham.
Yemen is the second last least peaceful country in the world and, during 2021, it has become the least peaceful country in the MENA region, surpassing Syria that had been in that position since 2014. Yemen’s level of peacefulness has been deteriorating since 2008, but the situation has escalated in 2014 with the outbreak of the civil war. Things have become considerably worse in 2021 and Yemen has recorded deteriorations in the Militarisation and Safety and Security domains. The indicators with the largest deteriorations are refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDPs), and violent crimes. Nearly 13 percent of Yemenites are refugees or IDPs and about 2.6 million of them risk life-threatening shortages.
The least peaceful country in the world is once again Afghanistan, and it has been the least peaceful county for the past 4 years. Although it recorded a slight improvement in peacefulness because of a fall in deaths from internal conflict and homicide rate, it still has the highest terrorism impact in the world. Today Afghanistan is facing what the UN has described as ‘The worst humanitarian disaster we’ve ever seen’ that began in August 2021 with the retirement of the US troops and the rise to power of the Taliban. For the past 10 years, the country has depended on foreign help and funding, which were withdrawn when the Taliban swept into power, with dreadful consequences. At present time, millions of people are starving and cannot access hospitals, most of which were forced to close because of the lack of funding. Poverty caused an increase in crime rates, with daily robberies and kidnapping cases. The current situation has also caused a dramatic fall in human rights, especially for women.
The Global Peace Index gives important information on the status of every area in the world. Sometimes it can be quite a discouraging read, as it includes awful information about wars and violence. However, we can overturn our perspective and read the Index through hopeful lenses. Even those countries with low scores of peacefulness sometimes record tiny improvements and those tiny improvements can give us hope that there will be more in the future.
Francesca Cuomo
Sources:
Institute for Economics & Peace, Global Peace Index, 2021.
Institute for Economics & Peace, Economic Value of Peace, 2021.
https://thelogicalindian.com/uplifting/international-day-of-peace-iceland-peaceful-country-30800#:~:text=This%20honour%20is%20calculated%20using,a%20cornucopia%20of%20other%20aspects (last consulted on 13/02/2022).
https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PaperDetails/33310 (last consulted on 14/02/2022)
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-yemen (last consulted on 14/02/2022)
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-syria (last consulted on 14/02/2022)
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-south-sudan (last consulted on 14/02/2022).
https://www.ilpost.it/2021/11/28/afghanistan-regime-100-giorni/ (last consulted on 15/02/2022).
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/12/afghanistan-is-facing-a-humanitarian-disaster-un-says.html (last consulted on 15/02/2022).
