Global Peace Index
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love, mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”Talmud
The Global Peace Index measures each year the national peacefulness of a country based on perceptions of criminality, security officers and police, homicides, incarceration, access to weapons, intensity of internal conflict, violent demonstrations, violent crime, political instability, political terror, weapon imports, terrorism impact and deaths from internal conflict.
I’ve done blogs about it before rating the safest countries and the not safest countries to visit.
But what really shocks me is that the US is a slacker when it comes to promoting positive peace. It is rated 103 on a list of 163 countries. This means that there are are a 102 countries that are safer to visit and live in than the US. Our performance number is lowered because of the number of people in our prison system and our involvement in conflicts overseas.
There are the usual but many were surprising to me. Uganda is rated 101. Uganda is safer to visit than the US – apparently. Jordan (where I just was) is much safer at 96. Angola, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, Gambia, are all in the nineties. Haiti, Burkina Faso Peru, Cuba, Bangladesh and Paraguay have a rating in the eighties. Liberia, Benin, Oman and Senegal are in the seventies. Nicaragua, Argentina, Mozambique, Lesotho, United Arab Emirates, Bosnia and Herzegovina are in the sixties. Madagascar is above Italy which is rated 39. Chile and Botswana are in the twenties.
According to the data, we are further away from World Peace then ever with the Middle East dragging us down.
The most peaceful countries continue to improve their rating while the least peaceful ones are getting worse. Violence and conflict are escalating. The world continues to spend enormous resources on creating and containing violence but very little on peace.
In case you just woke up from a coma, the world is less peaceful this year than it was last year.
Fly safe,
JAZ
Travel Well, Fly Safe 