• by Portia Crowe (united nations)
• Thursday, May 26, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The world has witnessed a decline in global peace over the last year, according to the 2011 Global Peace Index, or GPI, released by the Institute for Economics and Peace Wednesday.

Ranked on a scale from 1.0 to 5.0, where 1.0 is the most peaceful and 5.0 is the least peaceful, the global average has increased to 2.05 from 2.02 (it was 1.96 in 2009).

The Institute for Economics and Peace, or IEP, attributes this deterioration in international peace to the wave of civilian uprisings spreading across the Arab world.

'The fall in this year's index is strongly tied to conflict between citizens and their governments,' said IEP founder and executive chairman Steve Killelea, adding that 'Nations need to look at new ways of creating stability other than through military force.'

In light of the protests, Libya fell a remarkable 83 spots and sits now at 143rd place, while Bahrain dropped 51 places to 123rd and Egypt fell by 24 spots to 73rd place.

'Our belief is that peace is poorly understood around the world, not sufficiently researched,' Clyde McConaghy, the IEP's board director, told IPS. As such, the institute sought to create an index that could be used by others.

'We've identified what we call structures of peace,' said McConaghy, highlighting education, corruption, efficient government performance, and information flows between citizens as several key foci. 'Those structures can relate back to policy areas where governments can make decisions and actually improve things,' he said.

The GPI, now in its fifth year, is the statistical sum of the state of peace in 153 nations around the world. Gathered for the IEP by the Economist Intelligence Unit and guided by an international panel of experts, the index is designed to raise awareness about global drivers of peace and stability.

It ranks countries based on 23 indicators, which fall broadly under the categories of internal and external conflicts, safety and security within each country, and levels of militarisation.

To be included in the index, countries must have either a population exceeding one million people, or an area of 20,000 square kilometres. The 153 countries currently included account for 99 percent of the world's population.

The index's indicators range from homicides to weapons exports to prison populations, and of these, the most heavily weighted include levels of internal organised conflict, relations with neighbouring countries, and deaths from organised conflict — both internal and external.

In determining the chief drivers of peace, the Economist Intelligence Unit, or EIU, also pays close attention to external variables. It found, for example, that levels of corruption correlated closely with peace.

'Corrupt countries have problems with peace, they have problems with environment, they have problems with income, they have problems with almost everything,' Leo Abruzzese, editorial director at the EIU, told reporters Thursday.

The EIU also found clear correlations with increased income and democracy, which Abruzzes deemed 'a good sign'.

Abruzzes also highlighted the EIU's efforts to be as objective as possible.

'We understand that an index of this sort will be controversial; it has been in the past,' he said.

For this reason, the research unit gathered and combined data from a number of international sources — including United Nations sources — and, where qualitative data was used, it employed a team of full-time specialist country analysts.

The EIU also aimed to present all data as apolitically as possible. 'This does not come from a perspective of the left or the right,' Abruzzese said. 'Our goal here was to look at relative measures of peacefulness in a country, not necessarily why a country has made a decision.'

Indeed, the GPI was developed primarily as a non-partisan tool for governments, politicians, non-governmental organisations, academics, and businesses alike to better comprehend global peace.

As its name would suggest, the Institute for Economics and Peace also pays particular heed to economic stability as well as political security. Ongoing economic crisis has put Madagascar, for example, among this year's top five 'fallers' — countries that experience the greatest fall in peacefulness.

But as this kind of insecurity leads to sharp declines in peace rankings, the IEP emphasises the economic benefits of enhanced global peace.

'We are clearly hoping that by having a more analytical, rigorous, and continuing definition of peace, there might be policies that governments can bring into place that would make their nations more peaceful and therefore their people more safe, and indeed more affluent,' McConaghy told IPS.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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