GPI: Iraq is the world's 7th least peaceful country

GPI: Iraq is the world's 7th least peaceful country
2022-06-19T10:10:47+00:00

Shafaq News/ The Institute for Economics and Peace has ranked Iraq 157th out of 163 countries in its 2022 Global Peace Index, the head of the Iraqi Center of Economics and Politics, Wisam Hadmal, said on Sunday.

"This represents an improvement of two places on last year's ranking," he said, "Iraq ranked 16th among the Arab countries."

"Since 2003, the security failure, ISIS insurgency, the administrative and financial corruption, and the turbulent economic situation contributed to the deterioration of the peace indices," he explained.

The Middle East and North Africa region remained the world’s least peaceful. It is home to two of the five least peaceful countries in the world. However, it recorded the second-largest regional improvement over the past year.

Worldwide, the average level of global peacefulness deteriorated by 0.3 percent over the past year. Although small, the report says that this deterioration continues a long standing trend, with the GPI deteriorating in eleven of the past fourteen years.

The latest report only partially captures the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; these effects will be more fully captured in the 2023 report.

The global economic impact of violence was $16.5 trillion in 2021, equivalent to 10.9 percent of global GDP, or $2,117 per person.

Significant deteriorations in political instability, political terror, neighboring country relations and refugees and IDPs indicators occurred in 2022, with these indicators reaching their worst levels since the inception of the GPI in 2008.

The most peaceful countries were listed as Iceland, New Zealand and Ireland, while the lowest ranked were Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen.

Shafaq Live
Shafaq Live
Radio radio icon