Africa-Press – Mauritius. The 16th edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI), released on 15 July 2022, has designated Mauritius as the most peaceful country in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The GPI which rates 163 independent states and territories comprising 99.7 per cent of the world’s population according to their level of peacefulness, has ranked Mauritius 28th in the 2022 GPI. The country recorded a slight improvement of 1.3 per cent in its GPI score.
Produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), the GPI is the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness across three domains: the level of societal Safety and Security; the extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict; and the degree of Militarisation.
This year’s results found that the average level of global peacefulness deteriorated by 0.3 per cent. Although slight, this is the eleventh deterioration in peacefulness in the last fourteen years, with 90 countries improving, 71 deteriorating and two remaining stable in peacefulness, highlighting that countries tend to deteriorate much faster than they improve.
Iceland remains the most peaceful country in the world, a position it has held since 2008. It is joined at the top of the index by New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark and Austria.
In addition to discussing the findings from the 2022 GPI, the report includes an analysis of the military conflict in Ukraine. It covers likely increases in military spending, new and emerging uses of technology in the war, its impact on food prices and global shipping routes.
The report also contains a deeper analysis on violent demonstrations around the world. The economic impact of violence on the global economy in 2021 was $16.5 trillion in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.
This figure is equivalent to ten per cent of the world’s economic activity (gross world product) or $2,117 per person. The economic impact of violence has increased by 12.4 per cent from the previous year.
This was mainly driven by an increase in global military expenditure, which rose by 18.8 per cent, although more countries reduced their expenditure as a percent of GDP.
China, the US and Iran were the countries with the largest increases in military expenditure in nominal terms. Moving forward, the 2022 GPI reveals a world in which many nations have begun to recover from the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, many of the ramifications of the lockdowns remain, including supply chain disruptions and delays, product shortages, higher energy and food prices.
It is also a world that is suffering from increasing inflation, the highest levels in forty years in some countries and without an improvement in sight.
The rise in food and fuel costs has increased food insecurity and political instability globally, but especially in low-resilience regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Middle East and North Africa.
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