Study shows Iran is more peaceful than Israel
Via Haaretz:
A study of the world’s most peaceful countries released yesterday ranks Israel as fourth to last among the 144 countries ranked.
According to the Global Peace Index, an annual ranking of the world’s nations on the basis of how peaceful they are, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq are the only countries more dangerous than Israel.
This year the index was expanded to 144 countries. It now includes almost 99% of the world’s population. The index is constructed from 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators of external and internal measures of peace including levels of democracy and transparency, education and material wellbeing. Directly more peaceful than Israel on the list are Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad and Pakistan. Lebanon ranks 132nd, Iran ranks 99th and Syria ranks 92nd. The most peaceful country, according to the index, is New Zealand. It is followed by Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Austria. Iceland was rated most peaceful on last year’s index, but was displaced to fourth in 2009.
Steve Killelea, the index’s founder, said, “Now in its third year the causes of peace are becoming apparent and the net economic benefit to humanity is substantial. Peace does have an economic value apart from the very real humanitarian values associated with it. Research has calculated that the impact of lost peace to the world economy over a period of ten years is $48 trillion.”
Small, stable and democratic countries are consistently ranked highest on the index. Of the top 20 on the list, 14 are Western or Central European democracies. All five Scandinavian countries are in the top ten of this year’s index.
The U.S. rose six places from last year to 83rd. A significant negative for U.S. peace scores is the fact that the country still jails a higher proportion of its population than any other country in the index.
For the third year running, the country ranked last on the index was Iraq.
There is no link in this article to the actual study. Sounds suspect (but perhaps just lazy) because a quick search reveals the study for the Global Peace Index.
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