Armenia drops 19 spots in 2016 Global Peace Index

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia took the 110th spot among 162 countries worldwide in the 2016 Global Peace Index, published Wednesday, June 8 by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a think-tank which has produced the index for the past 10 years.

The 2016 Global Peace Index (GPI) shows the world became less peaceful in the last year. Results also show a growing global inequality in peace, with the most peaceful countries continuing to improve and the least peaceful falling into greater violence and conflict.

Among combined major factors for deterioration in Armenia – which ranked the 91st in the same report published a year earlier – are militarization (2 points out of 5), societal safety and security (2.3 out of 5) and domestic and international conflict (2,3 out of 5).

The Institute suggests that Armenia's national cost of violence stood at about $1,5 billion in the last year.

Neighboring Azerbaijan ranks the 134th, Georgia comes in the 85th, while Iran and Turkey take the 133rd and 145th spots, respectively.

The last decade has seen a historic decline in world peace. This interrupts the long term improvements in peace since World War II.

The worsening conflict in the Middle East, the lack of a solution to the refugee crisis and an increase in deaths from major terrorist incidents have all contributed to the world being increasingly less peaceful.

And there are now fewer countries in the world which can be considered truly at peace – in other words, not engaged in any conflicts either internally or externally – than there were in 2014.

According to the Institute, only Botswana, Chile, Costa Rica, Japan, Mauritius, Panama, Qatar, Switzerland, Uruguay, and Vietnam are free from conflict (based on indicators of domestic and international conflict).

Iceland was once again named the world’s most peaceful country, followed by Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Portugal. Syria was once again named the least peaceful country.

Also, the index says political instability, terrorism and conflict cost the global economy $13.6 trillion last year.