Do you live in a peaceful country?

Well, you can find out by having a look at the ranking of your country in the Global Peace Index. What is the global piece index? Well, as the site describe it, it is a ground-breaking milestone in the study of peace. It is an index that ranks the nations of the world by their peacefulness and identifies some of the drivers of that peace. In case you don’t want to read further and you are only interested in the ranking of the United States, they are ranked 97 out of 140.

I had a look at the expert panel and I must say it looks like a pretty diversified panel and this way the index can be seen as something reliable. You know, it’s not twelve experts from the United States or Australia who would rank their country first even if not the case. Also, you might wonder what are the indicators of peace, well here they are:

The Global Peace Index is intended as a review of the state of peace in nations over the past year, although many indicators are based on available data from the last two years. The advisory panel decided against including data reflecting a country’s longer-term historical experience of domestic and international conflict on the grounds that the GPI uses authoritative statistics on ongoing civil and trans-national wars collated by institutes such as the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo. These, combined with two indicators scored by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s analysts, comprise five of the 24 indicators.

• Number of external and internal conflicts fought: 2001-06
• Estimated number of deaths from organised conflict (external)
• Number of deaths from organised conflict (internal)
• Level of organised conflict (internal)
• Relations with neighbouring countries

Measures of societal safety and security

Ten of the indicators assess the levels of safety and security in a society (country), ranging from the level of distrust in other citizens, to the level of respect for human rights and the rate of homicides and violent crimes. Crime data is from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Five of these indicators have been scored by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s team of country analysts.

• Level of distrust in other citizens
• Number of displaced people as a percentage of the population
• Political instability
• Level of disrespect for human rights (Political Terror Scale)
• Potential for terrorist acts
• Number of homicides per 100,000 people
• Level of violent crime
• Likelihood of violent demonstrations
• Number of jailed population per 100,000 people
• Number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people

Measures of militarization

Nine of the indicators are related to a country’s military build-up - reflecting the assertion that the level of militarization and access to weapons is directly linked to how at peace a country feels internationally. Comparable data are readily available from sources such as the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).

• Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP
• Number of armed services personnel per 100,000 people
• Volume of transfers (imports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people
• Volume of transfers (exports) of major conventional weapons per 100,000 people
• UN Deployments 2007-08 (percentage of total armed forces)
• Non-UN Deployments 2007-08 (percentage of total armed forces)
• Aggregate number of heavy weapons per 100,000 people
• Ease of access to small arms and light weapons
• Military capability/sophistication

I advise you have a look at the website if you want to learn more, it is quite interesting.