23 Jun 2015

Institute for Economics and Peace, working with the Economist Intelligence Unit released its 2014 Global Peace Index (GPI), which once more ranked Botswana as one of the world’s most peaceful and best governed countries.

Botswana’s worldwide 2015 GPI rank is 31 out of 162 countries, up five places from last year.

This latest ranking continues to place Botswana above half of the European region countries surveyed, as well as all five of the Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council [i.e. UK (39), France (45), USA (94), China (124) and Russia (152)].

On the African continent Botswana remains behind Mauritius (25) and is followed by Namibia (48).

This year Iceland was again ranked as the world’s most peaceful nation, followed by Denmark, Austria, New Zealand, and Switzerland. Syria was ranked as the world’s least peaceful country, followed from the bottom by Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Central African Republic.

The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), which conducts the annual survey is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress.

This is the 9th edition, which ranks the nations of the world according to their level of peacefulness. The index is composed of 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources and ranks 162 independent states, covering 99.6 per cent of the world’s population.

It gauges global peace using three broad themes: the level of safety and security in the society, the extent of domestic and international conflict and the degree of militarisation. Ends