Ukraine, South Sudan and Egypt are among countries who have had a dramatic fall in the rankings while Qatar is one of the most likely places to see a drop in peace in the coming years

The world has become less peaceful each year since 2008 according to 2014's Global Peace Index (GPI), put together by the Institute for Economics and Peace. The continued conflict in Syria, deteriorating situation in Ukraine and civil war in South Sudan helped contribute to the trend.

The last year's fall in global peace was mostly attributable to drops in four of the 22 indicators used to put together the index:

Terrorist activity

Number of internal and external conflicts fought

Number of displaced people as a percentage of the population

Number of deaths from organised internal conflict



The ongoing civil war in Syria has made it into the world's least peaceful nation, with the country dropping below Afghanistan who held the spot last year.

Just above those two is South Sudan, which registered the biggest fall in peace of any this year following the internal violence that began last December. It registered the worst score in several of the indicators including political instability and ease of access to small arms.

Source: Global peace index 2014

South Sudan's deterioration in peace was twice as bad as Egypt, the country judged to have the second biggest fall in the index. The internal violence in the Central African Republic and Ukraine also place them in the list of top fallers.

Georgia had the most improved score, suggesting ever-increasing stability as it continues to recover from its 2008 conflict with Russia. It showed higher levels of both internal and external peace, with relations even beginning to thaw with Russia itself. Ivory Coast and Libya were second and third most improved respectively, with both countries emerging from conflict in the past few years.

Europe keeps place as most peaceful region

The top five most peaceful nations were completely unchanged from the previous year's study, with Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Switzerland again runners up to Iceland. Europe remained the most peaceful region as a whole although the United Kingdom ranked 47th, France 48th and Turkey 128th.

As well as Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan, the other nations in the bottom five for peacefulness were Iraq and Somalia.

Steve Killelea, founder and Executive Chairman of the IEP said:

Many macro factors have driven the deterioration in peace over the last seven years including the continued economic repercussions of the Global Financial Crisis, the reverberations of the Arab Spring, and the continued spread of terrorism. As these effects are likely to continue into the near future; a strong rebound in peace is unlikely. This is resulting in very real costs to the world economy; increases in the global economic impact of violence and its containment are equivalent to 19% of global economic growth from 2012 to 2013. To put this in perspective, this is around $1,350 per person. The danger is that we fall into a negative cycle: low economic growth leads to higher levels of violence, the containment of which produces lower economic growth.

Qatar among countries where peace predicted to deteriorate

This year's report also includes risk models that look at which countries are in danger of deteriorations or improving in peace in the coming years.

The countries categorised as at risk of "small to medium deteriorations in peace" include 2022 World Cup hosts Qatar as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina where civil unrest was reported this year.

Despite being this year's most improved country in terms of peacefulness, Georgia was also listed as well as Zambia, Haiti, Argentina, Chad, Nepal, Burundi and Liberia.

How accurate is their prediction model? Well the report cites the following evidence in support of it:



Using a combination of models, it was possible to forecast deteriorations in peace based on 2008 data for 27 out of 30 countries where peace had deteriorated by 2014. The model was also able to identify, on average, 70 percent of the countries which experienced the ten largest deteriorations in peace using a two-year window since 2006.

Methodology in detail

To calculate how peaceful a country is the GPI looks at 22 different indicators. Each of the different indicators is weighted according to importance and they can be broken down into three broad sections listed below with some examples:

Ongoing domestic and international conflict

Number of external and internal conflicts fought

Number of deaths from organised conflict

Level of organised conflict

Societal safety and security

Level of perceived criminality in society

Political terror scale

Number of homicides per 100,000 people

Number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people

Militarisation

Nuclear and heavy weapons capability

Ease of access to small arms and light weapons

Volume of transfers of major conventional weapons as recipients (imports) per 100,000 people

This calculation is used to get an overall score with Iceland, the most peaceful country, getting 1.19 while Syria, the least peaceful, gets 3.65.

Previous editions of the report have suggested slight rises in peace on a global level, which clashes with the decrease since 2008 figure I mentioned. This is because in 2014's report the global scores have been calculated on a per person basis, rather than the previous method of averaging country's scores.

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