Global Peace Index

VISION OF HUMANITY

PEACE’s INDEX

The Institute for Economics and Peace, as every year, has published the new “Global Peace Index” (GPI) relative to 2011. The GPI is a way of classifying countries and regions based on factors that determine the state of peacefulness, or rather the ability of a particular country to be considered peaceful. The index is produced on an annual basis and is developed in collaboration with an international team experts of peace and with different institutions. The factors taken into account for classifying a country are 23, including the number of wars and social conflicts, killings or bombings, the imprisoned, import of weapons, the political instability and the perception of crime in the society.
For 2011 have been examined 158 countries and according to the data, the virtual Gold Medal for 2011 belongs to Iceland, followed by Denmark and New Zealand. Among the countries in free-fall about condition of peace there are many zones of the Middle East, with Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Oman and Malawi, while the nations most dangerous are Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan. The single biggest change in the “high” ranking scenario is the case of Norway that, compared to 2007 and after the events of Utoya and growth of violence, falls from first to eighteenth place.
Italy, unfortunately, although improving over the past months, remains in the same 2007 position, mainly due to the strong perception of crime for Italians or propensity for violence.
But the most important data is a general increase, compared to 2010, of the peace in the world. And this comforts us!
The map indicates with different colors (from yellow to brown) the most peaceful countries, divided into increasing levels from 1 to 5. Except for some countries where no information was available, it is interesting to compare values from 2007 to 2011 (as the Economist did),  for the perception of how much countries have changed their peaceful status in the last four years. As in the United States, which in 2007 were less peaceful than China and now is aligned to the second level, or as the case of the Great Britain, playing as one of the most dangerous countries in Western Europe and came to be one of the most peaceful. For African and Asia continents the escalation, if not for the peace, has been, at least for the data received.

To have a complete sight of the situation I also add a map concerning the World conflicts of 2011.