Mapped: World’s Peacefulness in 2024

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Global geopolitical tensions have taken center stage in recent years as regional wars and trade conflicts have intensified. This graphic from Rajesh Palanisamy maps out countries by level of peacefulness in 2024, based on data from the Institute for Economics and Peace.

What is GPI and How’s it Measured?

Global Peace Index (GPI) is the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness. It uses 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources to measure peace across three domains: Societal Safety and Security, Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict, and Militarization.

Global Peace Index 2024

This year’s results show that the average level of global peacefulness deteriorated by 0.56%. This marks the 12th deterioration in peacefulness over the past 16 years, with 65 countries improving and 97 countries experiencing a decline in peacefulness. This is the highest number of countries to deteriorate in peacefulness in a single year since the index began. Additionally, this is the fifth consecutive year of global peacefulness deterioration.

Europe remains the most peaceful region in the world, hosting seven of the 10 most peaceful countries. However, it experienced a decline in peacefulness over the past year, recording its largest year-on-year deterioration in the Militarization domain since the GPI began in 2008.

North America experienced the largest regional decline in peacefulness, with both Canada and the U.S., showing significant decreases. This decline was driven by increases in violent crime and perceptions of criminality.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remains the least peaceful, housing four of the 10 least peaceful countries in the world, including the two least peaceful, Sudan and Yemen.

Main Factor affecting Global Peace

The conflict in Gaza and the ongoing war in Ukraine primarily drove the decline in global peacefulness. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has resulted in over 2,000 fatalities per month for nearly every month in the past two years, with neither side making significant gains. Since October 2023, the Gaza conflict has caused over 35,000 deaths, leading to a severe humanitarian crisis.

Technology and the rise of asymmetric warfare are making it much easier for smaller non-state groups, as well as smaller or less powerful states, to engage in conflict with larger states or governments. Over the past five years, the use of drones by non-state groups has surged, with the number of drone strikes increasing by over a thousand percent since 2018. The economic impact of war is severe; for instance, Syria’s GDP plummeted by 85 percent, from $252 billion in 2010 to $8.9 billion in 2020.

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