The
Global Peace Index is an attempt to measure the relative position of nations’ and regions’ peacefulness. It is maintained by
the Economist, an international panel of peace experts from peace institutes and
think tanks, together with the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies,
University of Sydney, Australia. The list was launched in May 2007, and is claimed to be the first study to rank countries around the world according to their peacefulness. The study is the brainchild of Australian entrepreneur
Steve Killelea and is endorsed by individuals such as the
Dalai Lama, archbishop
Desmond Tutu, and former US president
Jimmy Carter. Factors examined by the authors include internal factors such as levels of violence and crime within the country and factors in a country's external relations such as military expenditure and wars.
The research team was headed by The Economist Intelligence Unit in conjunction with academics and experts in the field of peace. They measured countries' peacefulness based on wide range of indicators, 24 in all. A table of the indicators is below.[1] In the table, UCDP stands for the Uppsala Conflict Data Program maintained by the University of Uppsala in Sweden, EIU for The Economist Intelligence Unit, UNSCT for the United Nations Survey of Criminal Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, ICPS is the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London, IISS for the International Institute for Strategic Studies publication The Military Balance 2007, SIPRI for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Arms Transfers Database, and BICC for the Bonn International Center for Conversion.
Indicators not already ranked on a 1 to 5 scale were converted by using the following formula x=(x-Min(x))/(Max(x)-Min(x)) where Max(x) and Min(x) are the highest and lowest values for that indicator of the countries ranked in the index. The 0 to 1 scores that resulted were then converted to the 1 to 5 scale. Individual indicators were then weighted according to the research team's judgment of their importance. The scores were then tabulated into two weighted sub-indices internal peace, weighted at 60% of a country's final score, and external peace, weighted at 40% of a country's final score.[7]
The main findings of the Global Peace Index are
