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Global Peace Index 2018: Measuring Peace in a Complex World, Sydney, June 2018

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Global Peace Index 2018: Measuring Peace in a Complex World, Sydney, June 2018 Quantifying Peace and its Benefits The Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress. IEP achieves its goals by developing new conceptual frameworks to define peacefulness; providing metrics for measuring peace; and uncovering the relationships between business, peace and prosperity as well as promoting a better understanding of the cultural, economic and political factors that create peace. IEP is headquartered in Sydney, with offices in New York, The Hague, Mexico City and Brussels. It works with a wide range of partners internationally and collaborates with intergovernmental organisations on measuring and communicating the economic value of peace. For more information visit www.economicsandpeace.org Please cite this report as: Institute for Economics & Peace. Global Peace Index 2018: Measuring Peace in a Complex World, Sydney, June 2018. Available from: http://visionofhumanity.org/reports (accessed Date Month Year). Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 Key Findings 4 RESULTS 5 Highlights 6 2018 Global Peace Index rankings 8 Regional overview 12 Improvements & deteriorations 19 TRENDS 23 Ten year trends in the Global Peace Index 26 100 year trends in peace 32 ECONOMIC IMPACT OF VIOLENCE 45 Results 46 The macroeconomic impact of peace 52 POSITIVE PEACE 59 What is Positive Peace? 60 Trends in Positive Peace 65 What precedes a change in peacefulness? 69 Positive Peace and the economy 73 APPENDICES 77 Appendix A: GPI Methodology 78 Appendix B: GPI indicator sources, definitions & scoring criteria 82 Appendix C: GPI Domain scores 90 Appendix D: Economic cost of violence 93 GLOBAL PEACE INDEX 2018 | 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This is the twelfth edition of the Global Peace Index Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iraq, and Somalia comprise (GPI), which ranks 163 independent states and the remaining least peaceful countries. territories according to their level of peacefulness. Produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace Europe, the world’s most peaceful region, recorded a (IEP), the GPI is the world’s leading measure of global deterioration for the third straight year. It deteriorated peacefulness. This report presents the most across all three GPI domains and eleven indicators, comprehensive data-driven analysis to-date on trends most notably on the intensity of internal conflict and in peace, its economic value, and how to develop relations with neighbouring countries. For the first time peaceful societies. in the history of the index, a Western European country experienced one of the five largest deteriorations, with The GPI covers 99.7 per cent of the world’s population, Spain falling 10 places in the rankings to 30th, owing to using 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from internal political tensions and an increase in the impact highly respected sources, and measures the state of of terrorism. peace using three thematic domains: the level of Societal Safety and Security; the extent of Ongoing South Asia experienced the largest regional Domestic and International Conflict; and the degree of improvement in peacefulness, with Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Militarisation. India, and Nepal all improving. Four of the five largest improvements in peacefulness occurred in sub-Saharan In addition to presenting the findings from the 2018 Africa, despite the region having a slight deterioration GPI, this year’s report includes analysis of trends in in its overall peacefulness. The single largest country Positive Peace: the attitudes, institutions, and structures improvement occurred in the Gambia, where that create and sustain peaceful societies. It looks at improvements in political instability, perceptions of changes in indicators of Positive Peace that criminality, and relations with neighbouring countries immediately precede deteriorations or improvements in saw it improve 35 places in the rankings, moving up to peacefulness, which provides a framework for 76th. The election of the new president Adama Barrow predictive analysis. The report also assesses the ways in lay behind the improvements in political stability and which high levels of peace positively influence major the Gambia’s relations with neighbouring countries. macroeconomic indicators. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region The results of the 2018 GPI find that the global level of recorded an improvement in peacefulness for only the peace has deteriorated by 0.27 per cent in the last year, third time in the last eleven years. Despite the marking the fourth successive year of deteriorations. improvement, it remains the world’s least peaceful Ninety-two countries deteriorated, while 71 countries region, a position it has held since 2015. Qatar improved. The 2018 GPI reveals a world in which the experienced the single largest deterioration in tensions, conflicts, and crises that emerged in the past peacefulness, as the political and economic boycott decade remain unresolved, especially in the Middle placed on it by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and East, resulting in this gradual, sustained fall in Bahrain led to deteriorations in relations with peacefulness. neighbouring countries and political instability. Underlying the fall in peacefulness, six of the nine The ten-year trend in peacefulness finds that global regions in the world deteriorated in the last year. The peacefulness has deteriorated by 2.38 per cent since four most peaceful regions – Europe, North America, 2008, with 85 GPI countries recording a deterioration, Asia-Pacific, and South America – all recorded while 75 improved. The index has deteriorated for eight deteriorations, with the largest overall deterioration of the last eleven years, with the last improvement in occurring in South America, owing to falls in the Safety peacefulness occurring in 2014. In Europe, the world’s and Security domain, mainly due to increases in the most peaceful region, 61 per cent of countries have incarceration rate and impact of terrorism. deteriorated since 2008. Not one Nordic country is more peaceful now than in 2008. Iceland remains the most peaceful country in the world, a position it has held since 2008. It is joined at the top Global peacefulness has deteriorated across two of the of the index by New Zealand, Austria, Portugal, and three GPI domains over the past decade, with Ongoing Denmark. Syria remains the least peaceful country in Conflict deteriorating by six per cent and Safety and the world, a position it has held for the past five years. Security deteriorating by three per cent. Terrorism and GLOBAL PEACE INDEX 2018 | 2 internal conflict have been the biggest contributors to environment for human potential to flourish. Positive the global deterioration in peacefulness over the Peace is not only associated with higher levels of decade. One hundred countries experienced increased peace, it is also associated with stronger terrorist activity, with only 38 improving, and total macroeconomic performance, as the factors that conflict deaths increased by 264 per cent between sustain highly peaceful societies also provide a 2006 and 2016. However, contrary to public framework for robust economic development: perception, the militarisation domain recorded a 3.2 per cent improvement since 2008. The number of armed • Non-OECD countries that improved in Positive services personnel per 100,000 people has fallen in 119 Peace averaged 1.45 per cent higher GDP growth countries, and military expenditure as a percentage of per annum from 2005 to 2016 than those that GDP fell in 102 countries with only 59 countries deteriorated in Positive Peace. increasing their spending. • Improvements in Positive Peace are also linked to domestic currency appreciation, with currencies Trends over the last century show that the deterioration on average appreciating by 1.4 per cent when their in peacefulness in the last decade runs contrary to the Positive Peace improves, compared to a 0.4 per longer term trend. cent depreciation when Positive Peace deteriorates. The economic impact of violence on the global • Credit ratings are also more likely to fall when economy in 2017 was $14.76 trillion in purchasing countries experience deteriorations in Positive power parity (PPP) terms. This figure is equivalent to Peace, falling on average by 4.5 points on a 0 to 22 12.4 per cent of the world’s economic activity (gross scale, while countries improving in Positive Peace world product) or $1,988 for every person. The are more likely to see their credit ratings improve economic impact of violence increased by two per cent or stay the same. during 2017 due to a rise in the economic impact of • Countries that are high in Positive Peace have less conflict and increases in internal security spending, volatile economic performance. with the largest increases being in China, Russia and • Measures of economic efficiency are also strongly South Africa . Since 2012, the economic impact of correlated with Positive Peace across six of the violence has increased by 16 per cent, corresponding eight Positive Peace Pillars. with the start of the Syrian war and rising violence in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Globally, Positive Peace improved by 1.85 per cent from 2005 to 2016. However, improvements in Positive Peace The report finds that peacefulness has a considerable stalled from 2013 onwards. There have been a number impact on macroeconomic performance. In the last 70 of worrying trends in
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