May 26, 2011 9:00am by David Farrar

Global Peace Index 2011

The 2011 Global Peace Index was released yesterday. New Zealand has been dubbed the most peaceful country for the last couple of years, but this year in 2nd place behind Iceland. On the plus side our economy didn’t disintegrate like their one did, so I’m still pretty happy here. The top ten countries are:

  1. Iceland
  2. NZ
  3. Japan
  4. Denmark
  5. Czech Republic
  6. Austria
  7. Finland
  8. Canada
  9. Norway
  10. Slovenia

That’s a pretty good ratng for Slovenia considering their history of formerly being in Yugoslavia.

The bottom 10 are:

  1. Somalia
  2. Iraq
  3. Sudan
  4. Afghanistan
  5. North Korea
  6. Congo
  7. Russia
  8. Pakistan
  9. Israel
  10. Central African Republic

They Index says NZ slipped into 2nd place due to a rise in the number of police officers (they call them internal security officers) and prison population.  Some would argue that makes us more peaceful! Interesting it seems we have also had an increase in the number of external conflicts – maybe they mean the SAS back to Afghanistan.

The biggest mover was Libya who dropped 83 places to No 143. No surprise there.