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GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE

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Global Peace Index: The United States Isn't Even Among the World's 100 Most Peaceful Countries
an article by Matt Lemas, RTOT News + Action (abridged and reprinted by permission)

World peace is a goal constantly that governments, humanitarians, average people, and beauty pageant contestants all strive to achieve. But according to this year’s Global Peace Index, Planet Earth is on the wrong track.


2014 Global Peace Index

click on photo to enlarge

Since the study began in 2008, world peace has shown a trend of “slight deterioration. The truth is, however, it hasn’t always been like this. For the sixty years after World War II, world peace looked like a real possibility. Only in the past decade has that trend been broken.

So, what happened? Let’s take a look at some of the major conflicts threatening world peace that have been sprouting up. There have been two civil wars in Syria and Libya, a huge increase in Central American drug violence, nonstop conflicts in the Middle East, and social unrest in Somalia, The Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan — and that’s just to name a few. All that violence doesn’t exactly foster peace.

To determine the peacefulness of 162 countries, the index uses 22 indicators, including the number of internal and external conflicts a country’s involved in, their rates of violent crime, and how much they spend on the military.

That data showed that world peace deteriorated over the last years, thanks to a widespread rise in four of the 22 indicators: level of terrorist activity, how many weapons they were importing and exporting, and how many homicides were reported.

Not all the results, however, were so depressing — some countries showed an increase in peace after the resolution of military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a reduction in military spending due to the European budget crisis.

Iceland topped the 2014 list as the most peaceful country in the world, followed by Denmark, Austria, Switzerland and Finland.  As a whole, Europe was the most peaceful region.

Conversely, the most tumultuous nations on the list were in the Middle East and Africa. Syria’s ongoing civil war meant it was the least peaceful nation, followed by Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iraq and Somalia.

South Sudan’s levels of peace went the most downhill in 2014 because of conflict between the government and rebel groups since last December. Politics grew unstable, and many people had access to guns. Egypt also dropped pretty far, falling 31 positions to 143 after the ousting of former president Mohamed Morsi.

Some more developed nations, like the United Kingdom and France, ranked 47 and 48 respectively. Across the pond, numbers varied. Canada ranked high as the 7th most peaceful nation, while Mexico ranked 138th.

As the world’s only superpower, the United States didn’t do so hot in the list — it placed as the 101st most peaceful nation, dropping four spots from last year. This drop was attributed to the Boston Marathon bombing, but as a whole, the report states America’s score is dragged down by its high degree of militarization, and because it has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

 Not surprisingly, a downgrade in peace doesn’t come without a price. According to the index, the price tag of global violence comes to $9.8 trillion in 2013 alone (wars aren’t cheap). That sum comes out to roughly $1,350 per person. . .

[Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article].

DISCUSSION

Question(s) related to this article:


How can we know if the culture of peace is advancing?,

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Latest reader comment:

One way we can NOT know if the culture of peace is advancing is from projects like the Global Peace Index which has recently been reviewed in CPNN.

The Global Peace Index measures the old dimensions of war and peace, not the new dimensions of culture or war / culture of peace.    Peace, in the old paradigm was the period between wars when countries were preparing themselves for the next war.    Culture of Peace, the new paradigm, is concerned with the deep roots of war, its cultural basis.

That can explain the paradox that it is the wealthy countries of the North that score highest on the index (Denmark, Austria, Switzerland and Finland), countries of Europe, which was involved in both the World Wars and which continue to profit from the unequal terms of trade between North and South which is enforced by the culture of war.  

When I was at UNESCO, the African ambassadors had the following to say: "One should not look to the South for the causes of the culture of war; instead, pose three questions. From where do the weapons come? From where do the violent television programmes come? And where are the terms of trade decided that impoverish the people of the South which leads to violence? "


This report was posted on August 20, 2014.