By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor
Distressingly the world is now a more dangerous place, astoundingly there are now only ten nations that can be considered totally free from any form of conflict. Most of this small countries have relatively small populations.
This shocking statistic was reported by the authors of the 10th annual Global Peace Index.
The ongoing strife in the Middle East, the growing refugee crisis and terrorists massacres shows that 2016 is less peaceful than 2015
Additionally there are now a reduced number of countries that can be described at not taking part in any internal or external conflicts than there were in 2014.
Only Botswana, Chile, Costa Rica, Japan, Mauritius, Panama, Qatar, Switzerland, Uruguay and Vietnam are free from conflict. They do not have any military personal in active duty in a war zone anywhere across the globe.
Brazil, the nation hosting the Olympics and trying to deal with the Zika virus, is the country that is not on that list anymore.
The index shows political instability deteriorated in 39 countries in the last 12 months, including what the “striking case” of Brazil.
It has fallen five places to 105th out of the 163 countries included in the study, due to the growth of people being incarcerated, amount of security officers deployed and a slight increase in terrorist activity.
IEP (Institute for Economics and Peace) founder Steve Killelea told The Independent: “If we look at the world overall, it has become slightly less peaceful in the last 12 months.
“But if we took the Middle East out of the index over the last decade – and last year – the world would have become more peaceful. It really highlights the impact the Middle East is having on the world.”
Iceland was again named the world’s most peaceful country, followed by Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Portugal. Syria was again named the least peaceful country, which is unsurprising as a the civil war has raged there for a number of years, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions of people.
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