Somalia for the Most Dangerous Country Title

Somalia received the highest score as a least peaceful country in global peace index by Independent Institute for Economics and Peace in Sydney. Australia is the 22-nd whereas New Zealand is just second after the most peaceful country – Iceland.

In Its sixth edition on peace ranking, the total coverage in the 2012 GPI is 158 nations, encompassing more than 99% of the world’s population. GPI was founded by Steve Killelea, an Australian technology entrepreneur and philanthropist.

It suggests that those not involved in violent conflicts with neighboring states or suffering internal wars are the most peaceful and in the light of that it brings out an astonishing $9 trillion US dollar economic benefit estimate if the world had been completely peaceful in 2011.

According to their press release while external measures of peacefulness have improved, there has been a rise in internal conflict. That’s exactly the case with Somalia which received the world’s least peaceful nation for the second year running, mainly due not having a nationally functioning state government since its descent into civil war in 1991. Their civil war situation lead to war and famine caused around 286,000 Somalis to flee the country and around 330,000 to be internally displaced in 2011.

Russia’s score improved slightly in the 2012 GPI as a result of a drop in military expenditure as a proportion of GDP and a reduction in the jailed population for the fourth successive year. Nevertheless, 534 per 100,000 remains high by international comparison—only Georgia, Eritrea, Rwanda and the US incarcerate a higher proportion of their population. Exports of major conventional weapons, the number of heavy weapons per head and the size of the police force relative to the population are, for example, among the highest of any country.