Ethiopia Ranks 139th from 163 Countries in The 2018 Global Peace Index

In 2016, Ethiopia ranked 119^th, and in 2017, 134^th.

In eastern Africa, there seems little sign of an end to the four-year old civil war in South Sudan, and the emergence of a new faction in the country under President Salva Kiir’s former military chief Paul Malong. This is likely to prolong the breakdown in

peacefulness of the world’s youngest country.

Ethiopia fell six places to 139 after Amhara protesters targeted Tigrayan business interests and foreign investors, leading to deteriorations in its scores for violent demonstrations and political terror. Neighbouring Kenya, in contrast, gained three places as a result of a reduced number of attacks by militants allied to Somalia’s al-Shabaab movement and fewer refugees coming over its north-eastern border.

The largest deterioration in the region was recorded by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down at the end of his second and final term at the end of 2016 has led to increasing violence, particularly in the country’s eastern provinces. The DRC now has more than five million people internally displaced and violence is expected to continue to escalate ahead of elections scheduled for December 2018, despite the presence of 15,000 UN peacekeepers.

Measuring peace in a complex world: the 2018 Global Peace Index shows the world is less peaceful today than at any time in the last decade.

The world has become less peaceful in the past year as longstanding global conflicts remain unresolved and the United States and other world powers face political instability, an international study finds.

The 12th annual “Global Peace Index” by the Institute for Economics and Peace, an independent non-profit think tank based in Australia, scored 163 independent states and territories according to their levels of peacefulness. It found the world became 0.27 percent less peaceful compared to 2016, with 92 countries deteriorating in peacefulness and just 71 countries improving. The think tank published the index on Wednesday.

The study assessed global peace through three filters: safety and security in society, extent of ongoing domestic or international conflict and the degree of militarization. Researchers considered 23 peace indicators to determine scores, including the number of casualties from terrorism and conflicts in that country, the number of murders per capita and the ratio of military spending to gross domestic product. Each indicator was scored on a 5-point scale.

The Middle East and North Africa remained the world’s least peaceful region, and the four most peaceful regions – Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific and South America – all recorded deteriorations.

Contrary to public perception, many countries decreased in militarization. Instead, the study attributed the gradual fall in peacefulness to a range of factors, including “increased terrorist activity, the intensification of conflicts in the Middle East, rising regional tensions in Eastern Europe and northeast Asia, and increasing numbers of refugees and heightened political tensions in Europe and the U.S.”

Europe – which has held the position of most peaceful region through each iteration of the index – faced increased political instability, impact of terrorism and perceptions of criminality, as 23 of the 36 European countries lessened in peacefulness. Also, no Nordic countries are more peaceful today than they were in 2008, researchers found.

The U.S. joined six other G20 members – Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey and Russia – in the group of 50 least peaceful countries in the world.

The U.S. ranked 121st out of 163 in the global assessment, falling from 114th and 103rd in the 2017 and 2016 Global Peace Indexes, respectively. While the U.S. essentially held its rank relative to other countries’ movements, its level of peacefulness declined to its lowest since 2011. Researchers largely attributed the drop in score to a hardening in partisanship in American politics – despite a reduced impact from terrorism, as well as Washington’s curtailed operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and a gradual reduction in the homicide rate during the past decade.

It’s worthwhile to consider a nation’s progress in terms of positive peace, or the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies, says Steve Killelea, executive chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace. And, civil resistance movements and societal responses are often a good indicator of a country’s positive peace levels.

“Countries with higher positive peace can absorb much bigger shocks than countries that are weak in positive peace,” he says.

That means countries that have the ability to adapt and adjust to challenges – whatever the disagreement or pressure within society may be – are more likely to maintain peace than countries without those adaptive qualities. Such countries “can suppress change but only to a certain point” before violence breaks out, Killelea says.

Iceland topped the listing with the lowest score, making it the most peaceful country and retaining the title it has held since 2008. New Zealand, Austria, Portugal and Denmarkround out the top 5.

Meanwhile, Syria, a nation plagued by civil war, was ranked as the least peaceful country for the sixth consecutive year. Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iraq and Somalia scored among the 5 least peaceful.

As the gap widens between the least and most peaceful countries, the global economy is taking a very real hit.

The global economic impact of violence of roughly $14.8 trillion in 2017 was equivalent to 12.4 percent of the world’s gross domestic product or nearly $2,000 per person, according to researchers. Violence in the U.S. last year cost Americans nearly $4,500 per person.

Source

FULLL REPORT

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A Fascinating Map of The World’s Most and Least Racially Tolerant Countries

My Note: Woow! If this is the harvested fruit of academic excellence, the world is braced for more immense confusion and trouble. By qualifying Somalia artificially as less homogeneous than European countries they attempt to prove, Homogeneity = Prosperity. Mind you, every European country is heterogeneous. Next, they speak of Pakistan as more tolerant than India or Germany. Does this make sense at all?! Even, racially more divided South Africa is bluer than, probably, the most tolerant state in history, Ethiopia. Yes! The world’s 20 most diverse countries are all African, but in their diversity lies their richness. All these diverse countries in Africa are more tolerant, and have more stability and peace than such relatively homogeneous and intolerant nations like Somalia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

The world knows which populations of the planet have refused to grow up, hence remained intolerant to their fellow human beings – yet, some of these “academicians” perform fraud representation – make superficial and dishonest studies to manipulate the obvious reality. Either they are blind or simply cynical!

Now back to the study…

When two Swedish economists set out to examine whether economic freedom made people any more or less racist, they knew how they would gauge economic freedom, but they needed to find a way to measure a country’s level of racial tolerance. So they turned to something called the World Values Survey, which has been measuring global attitudes and opinions for decades.

Among the dozens of questions that World Values asks, the Swedish economists found one that, they believe, could be a pretty good indicator of tolerance for other races. The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors.

If we treat this data as indicative of racial tolerance, then we might conclude that people in the bluer countries are the least likely to express racist attitudes, while the people in red countries are the most likely.

Continue reading…

The Terrorism and Political Violence Map

The Aon 2013 Terrorism and Political Violence Map, released on Wednesday, looks at 200 countries and is used as a gauge for the overall intensity of the risk of terrorism and political violence to business in each country – based on three icons indicating the forms of political violence which are likely to be encountered:

• Terrorism and sabotage

• Strikes, riots, civil commotion and malicious damage

• Political insurrection, revolution, rebellion, mutiny, coup d’etat, war and civil war

Neil Henderson, head of Aon Risk Solutions’ Crisis Management Terrorism team, said, “Terrorism is having an increasing impact on today’s global organizations and terrorist attacks are now regarded as a foreseeable risk. An attack not only on, but near an organization’s premises can result in human casualties, property damage, business interruption, legal liability issues and long term damage to brand and reputation.”

On the terrorism front, 44% of countries measured have a real threat of on-going terrorism. Although the report did not specifically define terrorism as religious in motivation, as has been the case throughout major U.S. and European terrorist outbursts, emerging market giants Russia and India were high on the list. Russia had a risk rating of three. India was worse, ranked four out of five.

Overall, Europe had the most positive regional outlook, with 47% of the countries seeing a decline to their risk ratings this year. Limited incidents of terrorism outside of Greece and Northern Ireland also accounted for lowered risk scores.

Middle East most unstable

As expected, the Middle East and Africa are the most unstable by far when it comes to terrorist risk. A total of 64% of those countries are rated a severe political risk, while North Africa, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan in particular faced the obvious bouts of extreme terrorism on a daily basis.

The Middle East is the most unstable region, according to the map, with 64% of countries assigned high or severe risk ratings. The risk of terrorism and sabotage was most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, with 85% of countries in that region at risk, according to the research.

Oil rich countries were the most risky. Nigeria was ranked a 5 on a scale of 1 to 5 for terrorist risk, while Tanzania and Mozambique were on par with the United States and Canada at a ranking of 2.

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