Yemen Overtakes Afghanistan As The World's "Least Peaceful" Nation
The Global Peace Index is a scoring system adopted by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).
It identifies and measures 23 different metrics that drive peace in a country.
Every year the non-partisan group ranks 163 countries based on factors such as military expenditure, weapons imports and exports, political terror scale, deaths from internal and external conflict, nuclear and heavy weapons, perceptions of criminality, homicide rate, political instability, violent crime, and demonstrations, among others.
Yemen is the least peaceful country in the world in the 2024 GPI, followed by Sudan, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. This is the first year that Yemen has been ranked as the least peaceful country in the world, with the country having fallen 24 places in the rankings since the inception of the index.
The gap between the most and least peaceful countries in the world is now wider than it has been at any point in the last 16 years.
Compared to 2008, the 25 most peaceful countries were one per cent more peaceful in 2024, while the 25 least peaceful countries were 7.5 per cent less peaceful.
The report finds that many of the conditions that precede major conflicts are higher than they have been since the end of the Second World War.
There are currently 56 active conflicts, the most since the end of Second World War, and with fewer conflicts being resolved, either militarily or through peace agreements.
The number of conflicts that ended in a decisive victory fell from 49 per cent in the 1970s to nine per cent in the 2010s, while conflicts that ended through peace agreements fell from 23 per cent to four per cent over the same period.
Conflicts are also becoming more internationalised, with 92 countries now engaged in a conflict beyond their borders, the most since the inception of the GPI in 2008.