09 Jun 2016

Botswana is still ranked among the world’s most peaceful nations, according to the 2016 Global Peace Index released Wednesday June 8.A press release from the Office of the President says Botswana has moved three places up in the GPI rankings.

The index is composed of 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources and ranks 163 independent states, covering 99.7 per cent of the world’s population.It gauges global peace using three broad domains: the level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic and international conflict and the degree of militarisation.

In this year’s index, Botswana is ranked 28 out of 163 countries, up three places from last year.This continues to place Botswana above over half of the European region countries surveyed, as well as all five of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in France (46) UK (47), USA (103), China (120) and Russia (151).

On the African continent Botswana remains behind Mauritius (23).In addition, the release says Botswana is one of only five countries to achieve a perfect score in the domestic and international conflict domain, the other four countries being Switzerland, Chile, Mauritius and Uruguay.

This year Iceland was once again ranked as the world’s most peaceful nation, followed by Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Portugal. Syria was listed as the world’s least peaceful country. It is followed from the bottom by South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. 

Panama (49) has the most improved standing while Yemen (158) saw the biggest drop.The Global Peace Index is maintained by the Institute for Economics and Peace, which 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. ENDS