A beach in Mauritius, one of the most peaceful nations in Africa, according to the newly released Global Peace Index.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Once again the Global Peace Index is out, but far from being a blanket of doom and gloom as it often is for Africa, there have been a few pleasant surprises.
Of the three countries that made the biggest improvements in peace since last year were a couple of African nations: Cote d’Ivoire and Libya. A common characteristic is that they’ve made considerable improvement in political stability in the wake of their previous conflict.
In fact, on the whole the index says that “we are currently living in the most peaceful century in human history”.
It ranks 162 countries covering 99.6% of the world’s population, and gauges global peace with the use of three themes: the level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic or international conflict, and the degree of militarisation. Some 22 indicators of peace are used.
There have been improvements in certain indicators including in; political terror, the number of armed service personnel, number of homicides and the number of deaths from organised external conflicts.
But a change in the nature of conflict, and intensity, has seen a steady decline in peace over the past year. As the report states, “trends in peace are shifting from hostility between states, to a rise in the number and intensity of internal conflicts”.
There have been a small number of severe crises in key hotspots across the continent. In sub-Saharan Africa there were outbreaks of warfare in South Sudan, Central African Republic and Mali. Though these were all internal in origin, sub-Saharan Africa saw the second sharpest deterioration in the regional scores.
Sharpest scores
In fact, four out of the ten countries with the sharpest negative score changes came from this region, topped by South Sudan and the Central African Republic.
Over the past year, the fall in global peace was primarily driven by the deterioration in four indicators: terrorist activity, number of internal and external conflicts fought, deaths from internal conflicts and number of displaced persons as a percentage of population.
In northern Africa, Egypt is a clear example of this. The ousting of president Mohammed Morsi and the violence that preceded and followed it resulted in Egypt dragging down the region’s scores significantly.
North Africa was one of the regions in the world that did not see an improvement in at least one of the five of the indicators that comprise the domestic and international conflict dimension, actually worsening in four.
On the whole, the coverage of conflict may be reducing as less independent nations are involved in conflict, however this is not translating as a lessening of intensity or economic cost of violence.
If you’re looking for peace, here are the best, and the worst, African nations that you should consider moving to:
