The question of whether the world is becoming more or less peaceful is complex, and the Global Peace Index aims to address it each year.
According to visualcapitalist.com, this index evaluates various factors contributing to peace, providing a comprehensive overview of global trends in violence, conflict, and security.
According to the latest edition of the report, 2024 is the fifth straight year in which global peacefulness has actually deteriorated, with the Russia-Ukraine and Gaza Strip conflicts being some of the key drivers.
This graphic from Julie Peasley highlights the 12 least peaceful countries between 2020-2024.
Methodology
The Global Peace Index is a scoring system adopted by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). It tries to quantify 23 different metrics that drive peace in a country.
Every year the non-partisan group ranks 163 countries, covering 99.7% of the world’s population, based on factors such as military expenditure, weapons imports and exports, political terror scale, deaths from internal and external conflict, nuclear and heavy weapons, perceptions of criminality, homicide rate, political instability, violent crime, and demonstrations.
In 2024, Yemen tops the list of the world’s least peaceful countries for the first time. In the three years previous, it ranked #2.
Ukraine has climbed the list consistently since war broke out in 2022, with the country ranking #5 in this year’s report.
Interestingly, militarization rates increased more this year than in the entire history of the index, having an outsized impact in decreasing overall peace. Of the 163 countries in the index, 108 (66.3%) of them saw rising militarization.
