Measuring and Ranking Peace
Although peace is widely perceived as something intangible, various organizations have been making efforts to quantify and measure it. The Global Peace Index produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace is a known effort to evaluate peacefulness in countries based on 23 indicators of the presence/absence of violence. The last edition of the Index ranks 158 countries on their internal and external levels of peace. According to the 2012 Global Peace Index, Iceland is the most peaceful country in the world while Somalia is the least peaceful one. The Failed State Index created by the Fund for Peace focuses on risk for instability or violence in 177 nations. This index measures how fragile a state is by 12 indicators and subindicators that evaluate aspects of politics, social economy, and military facets in countries. The 2012 Failed State Index reports that the most fragile nation is Somalia, and the least fragile one is Finland. University of Maryland publishes the Peace and Conflict Instability Ledger in order to measure peace. It grades 163 countries with 5 indicators, and pays the most attention to risk of political instability or armed conflict over a three-year period. The most recent ledger shows that the most peaceful country is Slovenia on the contrary Afghanistan is the most conflicted nation. Besides indicated above reports from the Institute for Economics and Peace, Fund for Peace, and University of Maryland, other organizations like the Economist Intelligence Unit and George Mason University release indexes that rank countries in terms of peacefulness.
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