Global Peace Index: Quaker House launch
The 2019 Global Peace Index was launched at Quaker House in Brussels
The average level of ‘global peacefulness’ improved for the first time in five years, according to the 2019 Global Peace Index launched at Quaker House in Brussels last month. However, according to the index, now in its thirteenth year, the world continues to be less peaceful than a decade ago.
Speaking at the event on 17 June, Serge Stroobants, director of operations for Europe, the Middle East and north Africa region at the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), explained that Europe has slightly improved in the last twelve months after five years of decline.
Olivia Caeymaex, the peace programme lead at the Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA), said: ‘The Global Peace Index is about more than measuring the presence or absence of war, and includes indicators of civilian displacement, personal violence and incarceration. The Global Peace Index 2019 finds that the main causes of recent violent conflicts remain unaddressed, supporting our call for European governments to invest more in peacebuilding, not less as is currently planned.’
According to the index, Iceland remains the most peaceful country in the world – a position it has held since 2008 – and is joined by New Zealand, Austria, Portugal and Denmark. Bhutan has recorded the largest improvement of any country in the top twenty, rising forty-three places in the last twelve years.
Afghanistan is now the least peaceful country in the world, replacing Syria, which is now the second least peaceful. For the first year since the index’s inception, Yemen is one of the five least peaceful countries, alongside South Sudan and Iraq.
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