(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Nation ranks 40th in the list of 162 countries in the 2014 global peace index while iceland tops and syria lies at bottom.
want to know how peaceful the world is? log on to the website visionofhumanity.org and it will give you the peace ranking of the country in which you live.
while iceland is the most peaceful country syria is the least peaceful. the united arab emirates ranks 40th in the list of 162 countries in the 2014 global peace index.
this year syria replaced afghanistan as the world’s least peaceful nation. while the uae’s rank has fallen five places in this year’s index it still features in the top 25 per cent of the world’s most peaceful countries.
georgia showed the largest improvement in peace levels while south sudan experienced the largest drop and now ranks as the third least peaceful country
violence world over impacted the global economy by $9.8 trillion or 11.3 per cent of gdp in the last year an increase of $179 billion year on year due to upward revisions of china’s military expenditure and the number and intensity of internal conflicts.
the index says the 10 countries most likely to deteriorate in peace in the next two years are: zambia haiti argentina chad bosnia and herzegovina nepal burundi georgia liberia and qatar.
regionally speaking the uae remains the third most peaceful country as it scores well on internal indicators. the absence of conflicts and terrorist activity and low levels of violent crime and homicides help it sail along. in 2013 political stability improved and there was a slight moderation of military spending.
preventing or dealing with violence in the uae was estimated to cost the national economy $11.7 billion in 2013 — 4.3 per cent of the gdp or $1270 per person. the uae has remained politically stable over the last five years contributing to a broadly peaceful period. the uprisings that erupted in several countries in the middle east and north africa in 2011 did not affect it but did prompt the authorities to tighten security.
globally terrorist activity the number of conflicts fought and the number of refugees and displaced persons were the key contributors to the continuing deterioration in worldwide peacefulness last year. this confirms a seven-year gradual but significant downward slide which overturns a 60-year trend of increasing global peacefulness dating back to the end of the world war ii.
steve killelea founder and executive chairman of the institute for economics and peace (iep) said “many macro factors have driven the deterioration in peace over the last seven years including the continued economic repercussions of the global financial crisis the reverberations of the arab spring and the continued spread of terrorism.
“the danger is that we fall into a negative cycle: low economic growth leads to higher levels of violence the containment of which produces lower economic growth.”
the uae he said has put a strong focus on domestic security throughout the period with considerable investment in maintaining a well-staffed police force. security focus has become even more marked since 2011 following the arab spring uprisings which saw protests break out elsewhere in the region.
in the iep’s current assessment cote d’ivoire recorded the second biggest improvement with reductions in the likelihood of violent demonstrations and in the number of displaced persons. the largest improvement occurred in georgia as it gradually returned to normality following its 2011 conflict with russia.
while major deteriorations also occurred in egypt ukraine and the central african republic the most peaceful region of the world continues to be europe while the least peaceful region is south asia.
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