Such reports should drop the idea of ranking countries and instead focus on the rise or fall in per-country scores relative to their previous scores.
Whenever countries are ranked against each other, discussions inevitably focus on the relative ranks and ignore the underlying causes of any drop in scores.
When a country moves up in rank mostly because some other countries moved down, it feels odd to the people there who wonder why they ranked higher without any improvements on the ground. Nationalist governments tend to claim the higher rank is because of their policies, knowing that their people most likely won't study the changes in score components of previous years.
And adding to that, at minimum countries need to be evaluated by their parts. In most of the countries currently at war there are parts were it is relatively safe (but still worse than at peace time), and some parts where it is literally hell. Averaging them all doesn't make sense really.
Worth noting that "peace" here doesn't mean "safe to live in". Instead it includes both internal conflict, but also things like military preparedness and access to heavy and nuclear weapons.
That's why unsafe but underdeveloped nations rank higher than some countries that are often considered domestically safe.
Yeah, it seems more like a "warmongering index", something like "belligerent intent * amount of military power to realize that intent".
At least that would explain how "Palestine" ranks as (slightly) more peaceful than Israel even though it's probably one of the most "unsafe" places on the planet right now.
Also Russia has the highest score but has neither the world's most powerful military nor would it be the least safe country to live in. But it likely is the country with the largest army that is currently engaged in open, offensive warfare.
It's a useful thing to measure for sure, but if that's what's measured, shouldn't there be more focus on the alliances and power relations between the countries? E.g. all the countries are listed individually here, but some are members of NATO, some of BRICS or SCO, some have bilateral military agreements, etc.
How would this deal with "proxy conflicts" and non-state actors?
If this had been published a few years before, would the breakaway Donbass republics have counted as countries? (If yes, they might even have counted as relatively "peaceful" as there was no reason for them to attack anything - their existence was the attack)
Would Hezbollah be counted towards Lebanon, towards Iran, towards Palestine or not counted at all?
This is a nitpick but it's a bit awkward to call something "Global Peace Index" and then have it be a number where lower scores indicate more peace. It seems like it would make more sense to invert the scores.
Maybe. I think one thing that contributes to my interpretation is that "peace" is something you can have more or less of, but you can't have more or less Erdős. So seeing "Erdős number" I just think "measuring something about Erdős", but seeing "peace index" I get a slightly more specific feeling of "measuring the amount/quantity/duration of peace".
> Norway experienced the largest deterioration in peacefulness in
the region, which was primarily caused by a substantial
deterioration on the Militarisation domain. The military
expenditure (% GDP) indicator deteriorated by 31.1 per cent and
the weapons exports indicator deteriorated by 145 per cent. In
2024, the government unanimously adopted a new long-term
defence strategy that will substantially increase the total
defence budget over the next 12 years.15 The Safety and Security
domain saw a slight improvement of 0.08 per cent while all the
indicators in the Ongoing Conflict domain had no change.
Despite its fall in overall peacefulness, Norway has the second
most peaceful ranking in the world on the Safety and Security
domain.
I too found Norways placement on the list interesting. I lived there for 2 years. It doesn’t come much more chill than that.
Looking at the indices, while Norway is generally low on all the indicators, it’s maxed out on weapons exports and weapons imports. Not sure why that is? Because NATO traffics through there a bunch?
Meanwhile, next door Sweden ranks lower in these categories, even though Saab makes air fighters and the like. Weird numbers indeed.
Croatia is a great country, and so are the others from the former Yugoslavia.
But Croatia’s “peacefulness”
depends very heavily on the of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
I feel like the target audience for this, the freedom and democracy and crime indexes etc is the citizens of the world not the current leaders. Its about informing people that better and safer exists.
I don't know if this is happening for anyone else, but Greenland is missing, which is deeply and darkly amusing for many reasons, least of all the size of the omission.
How the hell is Nepal more peaceful than China or Bolivia? Last week the country has had extremely violent protests, with widespread vandalism and arson leading to inadvertent murder of political leaders, as well as many prison breakouts.
I was right there during the protests (as a tourist) and it was such a bizarre situation.
The thing started with the police _killing_ more than 10 children. And after that the crowd went after places like police stations, some palaces and the parliament. Most politicians fled, but the ones that were caught up were mostly bitten up, not killed.
As someone from Eastern Europe, who lived through the fall of the Soviet Union, it all seemed remarkably chill and peaceful - people were really after justice, not vengeance.
Prisons were mostly filled by political prisoners, though some bad apples took advantage to escape as well.
Being just a few kilometres away from the epicentre of things, it all felt very chill, people on the streets were very happy, police were ok, military was smiling and chatty - they were giving people water and trying to “look helpful”
Just the media wants to portray chaos cause that’s what’s driving the clicks, but the situation on the ground was quite ok.
The people did a quick *discord* vote, chose an interim president - who is someone everyone in the country agrees is one of the few incorruptible and honest people, and they will apparently have a proper election at some point when things settle down.
As “revolution” goes this seems like the most sane one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few …
Protest are often like this. Where it’s going on it is very intense but just on a side street people can be sitting quietly sipping latte like nothing special is happening.
The police also killed 19 people but your comment doesn’t mention that.
In addition the military has not taken over, but currently seems to be honoring the demand of the protestors for new leadership and addressing the widespread corruption in the nation.
It’s too early to call, to be sure. But I’m hopeful that there can be a peaceful transition from here towards something better for Nepal.
The components of the index are all sourced from stuff like various UN agencies or Amnesty reports, so even if the report is compiled instantly, it probably trails by 6 months on average.
If you click on a county it gives you a breakdown. China scored 5/5 for Nuclear and Heavy weapons, 4.5/5 for political terror, and 4/5 for neighboring country relations.
"Positive Peace is defined as the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. The Positive Peace Index measures the level of societal resilience of a nation or region according."
And the United States scores very high. Losing a bit of credibility there.
Papua New Guinea more peaceful than the United States, huh? Even experienced travel vloggers barely visit that country because of how much violence there is.
Sure Papua New Guinea scores 5/5 on the "Violent Crime" assessment (to the US's 2/5), but the US incarceration rate is 5/5, while Papua New Guinea only scores 1.5/5.
The US also has much more weapons exports, and external military involvement.
People deciding where to travel are largely thinking about "violent crime" levels moreso than "how many fighter jets does this country sell"
This report tries to also take into account things like "Military size, expenditure, and weapon exports", which surely indicates a non-peaceful nation, even if on the ground citizens can live peacefully.
If the definition of "peace" includes nation-level involvement in conflict, then I think it's very fair to argue that the US isn't a peaceful country. Papua New Guinea is not providing significant military support to multiple wars at once. The US certainly is.
Do you realize how much violence there is in the US? The assassination of Charlie Kirk, stabbing of ukrainian refugee in the subway, the beheading of an indian man in Dallas. And those are just this month.
yeah, and Thailand and Cambodia currently have a border dispute with military engagements resulting in death of soldiers and attacks on civilian buildings, with both sides activating their military in response.
and yet they are more peaceful than the USA.
The border dispute has been going on for decades though, but just recently escalated to deaths.
The russia had started over a dozen wars and committed multiple genocides, one of which is globally recognized, all in just the last hundred years. Ukraine had only been defending in at least the last three centuries.
This rating is bs, because the methodology doesn't make sense.
Well, I’m simply making the point that until recently programming required a certain amount of rigor and precision that is no longer necessary because of AI. And that now we can do the sort of hand-wavy, p-hacky work that has been available to social scientists for decades.
Most of the composite indexes of this kind are similarly meaningless. It's certainly not just the domain of NGOs.
But to be fair, if it makes people to stop and look why they have different preconceived ideas, I think it's a positive. For example I didn't know that Norway is so militaristic.
I’ve spent significant time in Africa. South Africa is higher than the US despite being a place where everyone has razor wire topped walls around their houses, and having the 5th highest murder rate in the world.
The US has problems. I myself was the victim of a violent robbery 15 years ago. But the idea that it’s less peaceful than South Africa, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, and only marginally more peaceful than Haiti? Come on…
The index is not just about "how peaceful is the average citizen's life", which is one part of it, but also includes other things like how many wars the country participates in, how much of their government budget goes to military, etc. You shouldn't get a good "Global Peace Index Score" while exporting violence across the globe.
Such reports should drop the idea of ranking countries and instead focus on the rise or fall in per-country scores relative to their previous scores.
Whenever countries are ranked against each other, discussions inevitably focus on the relative ranks and ignore the underlying causes of any drop in scores.
When a country moves up in rank mostly because some other countries moved down, it feels odd to the people there who wonder why they ranked higher without any improvements on the ground. Nationalist governments tend to claim the higher rank is because of their policies, knowing that their people most likely won't study the changes in score components of previous years.
And adding to that, at minimum countries need to be evaluated by their parts. In most of the countries currently at war there are parts were it is relatively safe (but still worse than at peace time), and some parts where it is literally hell. Averaging them all doesn't make sense really.
I feel like that's basically the whole idea of these kinds of reports already: to create a news hook based on shifts in the ranking.
Worth noting that "peace" here doesn't mean "safe to live in". Instead it includes both internal conflict, but also things like military preparedness and access to heavy and nuclear weapons.
That's why unsafe but underdeveloped nations rank higher than some countries that are often considered domestically safe.
Yeah, it seems more like a "warmongering index", something like "belligerent intent * amount of military power to realize that intent".
At least that would explain how "Palestine" ranks as (slightly) more peaceful than Israel even though it's probably one of the most "unsafe" places on the planet right now.
Also Russia has the highest score but has neither the world's most powerful military nor would it be the least safe country to live in. But it likely is the country with the largest army that is currently engaged in open, offensive warfare.
It's a useful thing to measure for sure, but if that's what's measured, shouldn't there be more focus on the alliances and power relations between the countries? E.g. all the countries are listed individually here, but some are members of NATO, some of BRICS or SCO, some have bilateral military agreements, etc.
How would this deal with "proxy conflicts" and non-state actors?
If this had been published a few years before, would the breakaway Donbass republics have counted as countries? (If yes, they might even have counted as relatively "peaceful" as there was no reason for them to attack anything - their existence was the attack)
Would Hezbollah be counted towards Lebanon, towards Iran, towards Palestine or not counted at all?
Logically one should more safer to live in a country which has nukes, no?
There's a very popular saying, "Live by the sword, die by the sword", and it probably applies for those with the nukes.
This is a nitpick but it's a bit awkward to call something "Global Peace Index" and then have it be a number where lower scores indicate more peace. It seems like it would make more sense to invert the scores.
A lot of indexes and measurements are like this though when there is a potentially infinite range on one side.
Erdős numbers for instance, a higher number indicates less distance to Erdős.
Maybe. I think one thing that contributes to my interpretation is that "peace" is something you can have more or less of, but you can't have more or less Erdős. So seeing "Erdős number" I just think "measuring something about Erdős", but seeing "peace index" I get a slightly more specific feeling of "measuring the amount/quantity/duration of peace".
I have to say, this is a very strange list. Croatia as one of the most peaceful countries? More peaceful than Norway?
What exactly is this list supposed to represent?
> Norway experienced the largest deterioration in peacefulness in the region, which was primarily caused by a substantial deterioration on the Militarisation domain. The military expenditure (% GDP) indicator deteriorated by 31.1 per cent and the weapons exports indicator deteriorated by 145 per cent. In 2024, the government unanimously adopted a new long-term defence strategy that will substantially increase the total defence budget over the next 12 years.15 The Safety and Security domain saw a slight improvement of 0.08 per cent while all the indicators in the Ongoing Conflict domain had no change. Despite its fall in overall peacefulness, Norway has the second most peaceful ranking in the world on the Safety and Security domain.
I too found Norways placement on the list interesting. I lived there for 2 years. It doesn’t come much more chill than that.
Looking at the indices, while Norway is generally low on all the indicators, it’s maxed out on weapons exports and weapons imports. Not sure why that is? Because NATO traffics through there a bunch?
Meanwhile, next door Sweden ranks lower in these categories, even though Saab makes air fighters and the like. Weird numbers indeed.
Croatia is currently very peaceful. What exactly do you take issue with?
Croatia is a great country, and so are the others from the former Yugoslavia. But Croatia’s “peacefulness” depends very heavily on the of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
Croatia is in the EU so it's beyond unlikely that BiH and Serbia will cause any shenanigans.
I'm very happy that Slovenia is 9th safest. And wondering wtf I'm doing in USA which is rapidly falling to the bottom.
if anything that’s great. it’s cool to hear about a place that has swung that dramatically during my lifetime.
Quite a different list when we compare crime/safety https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp
Can anyone speak to any practical policy decision any organization or state has ever made in response to this particular index?
I feel like the target audience for this, the freedom and democracy and crime indexes etc is the citizens of the world not the current leaders. Its about informing people that better and safer exists.
I don't know if this is happening for anyone else, but Greenland is missing, which is deeply and darkly amusing for many reasons, least of all the size of the omission.
At only 163 entries of ca. 200 countries, a whole bunch of stuff is missing. Andorra as well, for example.
Not an omission, Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark. Denmark is listed.
Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark that, at least as rendered on my screen, is missing from the map entirely.
I don’t know where you are looking, but Greenland is on the map on page 8 and colored gray to represent “not included”
I guess territories get a free pass. Puerto Rico is also grey.
I live in New Zealand. Very peaceful. Funny to see Ireland above it.
How the hell is Nepal more peaceful than China or Bolivia? Last week the country has had extremely violent protests, with widespread vandalism and arson leading to inadvertent murder of political leaders, as well as many prison breakouts.
I was right there during the protests (as a tourist) and it was such a bizarre situation.
The thing started with the police _killing_ more than 10 children. And after that the crowd went after places like police stations, some palaces and the parliament. Most politicians fled, but the ones that were caught up were mostly bitten up, not killed.
As someone from Eastern Europe, who lived through the fall of the Soviet Union, it all seemed remarkably chill and peaceful - people were really after justice, not vengeance.
Prisons were mostly filled by political prisoners, though some bad apples took advantage to escape as well.
Being just a few kilometres away from the epicentre of things, it all felt very chill, people on the streets were very happy, police were ok, military was smiling and chatty - they were giving people water and trying to “look helpful”
Just the media wants to portray chaos cause that’s what’s driving the clicks, but the situation on the ground was quite ok.
The people did a quick *discord* vote, chose an interim president - who is someone everyone in the country agrees is one of the few incorruptible and honest people, and they will apparently have a proper election at some point when things settle down.
As “revolution” goes this seems like the most sane one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few …
Protest are often like this. Where it’s going on it is very intense but just on a side street people can be sitting quietly sipping latte like nothing special is happening.
The police also killed 19 people but your comment doesn’t mention that.
In addition the military has not taken over, but currently seems to be honoring the demand of the protestors for new leadership and addressing the widespread corruption in the nation.
It’s too early to call, to be sure. But I’m hopeful that there can be a peaceful transition from here towards something better for Nepal.
The components of the index are all sourced from stuff like various UN agencies or Amnesty reports, so even if the report is compiled instantly, it probably trails by 6 months on average.
It's funny how you can tell the bias of their sources just judging by the skewed results.
I cannot comment on the methodology, but this report was published in June 2025 and the report appendix mentions it covers 2024 (presumably calendar).
The recent protests would have not been covered in this edition.
That's just last week though. outliers don't dictate the average.
If you click on a county it gives you a breakdown. China scored 5/5 for Nuclear and Heavy weapons, 4.5/5 for political terror, and 4/5 for neighboring country relations.
Bolívia is a crazy scary place
Apparently not as scary as 80 other places.
A funny one is the "Positive Peace Index"
"Positive Peace is defined as the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. The Positive Peace Index measures the level of societal resilience of a nation or region according."
And the United States scores very high. Losing a bit of credibility there.
Papua New Guinea more peaceful than the United States, huh? Even experienced travel vloggers barely visit that country because of how much violence there is.
Sure Papua New Guinea scores 5/5 on the "Violent Crime" assessment (to the US's 2/5), but the US incarceration rate is 5/5, while Papua New Guinea only scores 1.5/5.
The US also has much more weapons exports, and external military involvement.
People deciding where to travel are largely thinking about "violent crime" levels moreso than "how many fighter jets does this country sell"
This report tries to also take into account things like "Military size, expenditure, and weapon exports", which surely indicates a non-peaceful nation, even if on the ground citizens can live peacefully.
If the definition of "peace" includes nation-level involvement in conflict, then I think it's very fair to argue that the US isn't a peaceful country. Papua New Guinea is not providing significant military support to multiple wars at once. The US certainly is.
Do you realize how much violence there is in the US? The assassination of Charlie Kirk, stabbing of ukrainian refugee in the subway, the beheading of an indian man in Dallas. And those are just this month.
Have you even read any news reports from PNG? Checked out any local papers?
Seems to be a lagging indicator. Nepal sits at 1.99 (and yellow, middle of the range).
yeah, and Thailand and Cambodia currently have a border dispute with military engagements resulting in death of soldiers and attacks on civilian buildings, with both sides activating their military in response.
and yet they are more peaceful than the USA.
The border dispute has been going on for decades though, but just recently escalated to deaths.
:yawningface:
Considering America polices the waves, George Orwell’s quip comes to mind
> Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf
You should watch Patlabor 2.
Ukraine is right near the russia at the bottom.
The russia had started over a dozen wars and committed multiple genocides, one of which is globally recognized, all in just the last hundred years. Ukraine had only been defending in at least the last three centuries.
This rating is bs, because the methodology doesn't make sense.
This is the NGO equivalent of vibe coding. The methodology is wrong, the results don’t make any sense, but it feels right. Ship it!
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"Don't be snarky."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Well, I’m simply making the point that until recently programming required a certain amount of rigor and precision that is no longer necessary because of AI. And that now we can do the sort of hand-wavy, p-hacky work that has been available to social scientists for decades.
Most of the composite indexes of this kind are similarly meaningless. It's certainly not just the domain of NGOs.
But to be fair, if it makes people to stop and look why they have different preconceived ideas, I think it's a positive. For example I didn't know that Norway is so militaristic.
as long as it gets those blob dollars!
Hard to take this too seriously when the US is way below war torn countries in Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_wars_involving_the_Un...
United States is nearly always in conflict to the point that it is difficult to find a year where USA is not involved in a conflict.
The raw data behind the index is available. Which points in the scoring do you believe not accurate and why?
"the country I live in can't be that bad" is a feeling that can be hard to shake. Even taking into account selection bias.
I’ve spent significant time in Africa. South Africa is higher than the US despite being a place where everyone has razor wire topped walls around their houses, and having the 5th highest murder rate in the world.
The US has problems. I myself was the victim of a violent robbery 15 years ago. But the idea that it’s less peaceful than South Africa, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, and only marginally more peaceful than Haiti? Come on…
The index is not just about "how peaceful is the average citizen's life", which is one part of it, but also includes other things like how many wars the country participates in, how much of their government budget goes to military, etc. You shouldn't get a good "Global Peace Index Score" while exporting violence across the globe.
Ireland as #2 with all these attacks on indians?
Do you have any stats on how many Indians were attacked in Ireland ?
My bad. looks like there are multiple attacks not just random one-off ones.