India is one of the most ‘unpeaceful’ places in the world, going by the Global Peace Index – a ranking of nations according to their states of peace.
Out of the 153 countries, India ranked towards the bottom in terms of peace, at 135.
Iceland is the world’s most peaceful nation, followed by New Zealand, Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Iraq (152) moved from the bottom of the Index for the first time ever in the five year history of the index.
It gauges ongoing domestic and international conflict, safety and security in society, and militarisation in by taking in to account 23 separate indicators.
2010 is the third consecutive year that the GPI, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), has shown a decline in the levels of world peace.
The 2011 Index was impacted by the Arab uprisings as Arab nations dropped in the peace index.
Libya (143) saw the most significant drop – falling 83 places; Bahrain (123) dropped by 51 places – the second largest margin; while Egypt (73) dropped 24 places.
Unrest caused by economic instability also led to falls in levels of peacefulness in Greece (65), Italy (45), Spain (28), Portugal (17) and Ireland (11).
While the overall level of peacefulness was down, this year’s data did show increased peacefulness in some areas – most notably levels of military expenditure and relations between neighbouring states
Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region least at peace, containing 40% of the world’s least peaceful countries, Sudan (151) and Somalia (153) at the bottom of the Index.
For the fifth consecutive year, Western Europe is the most peaceful region with the majority of countries ranking in the top 20. Four Nordic countries are ranked in the top ten; however, Sweden drops to number 13 because of its arms-manufacturing industry and the volume of exports of conventional weapons.
Joining the European Union has had a positive impact on the relevant members of Central and Eastern Europe with the Czech Republic moving into the top ten (5th place) for the first time and Slovenia rising to 10th position.
North America demonstrated a slight improvement since last year. Canada (8) jumped 6 places in this year’s rankings whereas the US’s (82) overall score remained unchanged although its ranking improved from 85th to 82nd.