Asia Peace Index Classification
Measuring peace at a global and national level allows to assess the social, political and economic factors that create stability.
The Global Peace Index (GPI) is the world’s leading indicator of national peacefulness, it ranks 163 countries according to their levels of peace. The measurement is developed every year by the Institute of Economics and Peace.
GPI includes three main thematic domains when measuring peace:
the level of Societal Safety and Security,
the extent of Ongoing Domestic and
International Conflict, and the degree of Militarisation.
According to the Institute of Economics and Peace, countries are classified in five distinct groups based on the values of GPI (between 1 as most peaceful and 5 as the least peaceful) as following:
Very High GPI values between 1 and 1.5;
High GPI values between 1.5 and 2;
Medium GPI values between 2 and 2.3;
Low GPI values between 2.3 and 2.7;
Very Low GPI values greater than 2.7
The results of 2017 GPI suggest that the global level of peace has slightly improved last year by 0.28 percent, with 93 countries improving, while 68 deteriorating.
By focusing more on Asia, GPI improvement varied remarkably across Asian regions and countries in 2017.
South Asia, for example, is characterised by peaceful countries such as Bhutan, but also by the least peaceful countries in the world such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2017, the situation worsened in Nepal with the high level of political instability, but it improved in Sri Lanka and India. In Central Asia, Uzbekistan showed the strongest improvement in terms of GPI followed by Kyrgyz Republic, Georgia, Tajikistan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. In contrast, the Middle East is characterised by a low and very low GPI due to high threat of terrorism that influenced Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Qatar. Moreover, Syria and Iraq remains the least peaceful countries in the world.
In South-East Asia, Cambodia made the most progress in 2017, while Indonesia registered the largest drop. Singapore, Laos, Indonesia are examples of the most peaceful countries in South-East Asia, signs of improvement have been registered in Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia. Philippines is the least peaceful country in the region due to its high level of homicide rate, incarceration rate and number of deaths for internal conflicts. On the other hand, East-Asia is characterised by peaceful countries with a high and very high GPI such as Mongolia, South Korea, and Japan, but also by countries with a medium GPI such as China. Improvement across most East-Asian was registered in 2017, while North Korea showed a deterioration of its GPI and remains one of the least peaceful countries in the world.
Global Peace Index is crucial to evaluate stability and opportunities for investments in a country or in a Region or for the re-organisation of a Group in different locations in the Far East.