America and China More Peaceful than India

The world has become more peaceful for the first time since 2009, says the 2012 Global Peace Index, a study conducted by Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). India's rank slipped to 142 in comparison with 137 last year. Unites States of America was ranked 88 while China was ranked 89 in the GPI.

 
The Global Peace Index for 158 countries composed of 23 indicators, ranging from measures of civil unrest and crime to military spending, involvement in armed conflict and ties with neighbors. The survey gauged three broad themes, namely the level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic or international conflict and the degree of militarization.

 
Iceland is the most peaceful country in the world, followed by Denmark and New Zealand. Canada takes the fourth position on the Global Peace Index list while Japan takes the fifth. Somalia remains the world’s least peaceful nation. Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Democratic Republic of Congo round up the bottom five. Israel and Pakistan were also ranked among one of the least peaceful nations.

 
The study also noted that Saarc nations like Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh are more peaceful than India. The survey founder Steve Killelea, an Australian entrepreneur said that in the past 12 months India's relation with its neighbors has improved. He added that "We expect this to continue for betterment of the entire region," as reported by TOI.

As per regions, Asia Pacific has an overall score improved by the largest extent from last year and included three of the top five risers. Sub-Saharan Africa is not the least peaceful region for the first time and has steadily increased levels of peacefulness since 2007. Middle East and North Africa were noted to be the least peaceful region, reflecting the upheaval and instability caused by the Arab Spring.

 
Western Europe remains noticeably the most peaceful region with the majority of its countries in the top 20 for the sixth consecutive year. North America showed a slight improvement, continuing a trend since 2007. While Latin America experienced overall gain with 16 of the 23 countries seeing improvements to their GPI score. All regions excluding the Middle East and North Africa saw an improvement in levels of overall peacefulness.

 
The top 5 fallers were noted to be Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Oman and Malawi. Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Bhutan, Guyana and the Philippines were the top 5 risers on the Global Peace index list.

 
There has been a change for the indicators as well. The top three largest improvements were noted for the political terror scale, terrorist acts and military expenditure as a percent of GDP. Improvements were seen in the military sphere, including a decline in military expenditure as a percentage of GDP in 2011, as many countries hit by economic headwinds moved to reduce budget deficits. Six of the world’s top military spenders: Brazil, France, Germany, India, the UK and the U.S., cut their defence budgets in 2011.