6 ms·
Global Peace Index 2025
- tlogan 1y agoI have to say, this is a very strange list. Croatia as one of the most peaceful countries? More peaceful than Norway? What exactly is this list supposed to represent?
- dismalaf 1y agoCroatia is currently very peaceful. What exactly do you take issue with?
- randall 1y agoif anything that’s great. it’s cool to hear about a place that has swung that dramatically during my lifetime.
- tlogan 1y agoCroatia is a great country, and so are the others from the former Yugoslavia. But Croatia’s “peacefulness” depends very heavily on the of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
- Swizec 1y agoCroatia is in the EU so it's beyond unlikely that BiH and Serbia will cause any shenanigans. I'm very happy that Slovenia is 9th safest. And wondering wtf I'm doing in USA which is rapidly falling to the bottom.
- travisgriggs 1y agoI too found Norways placement on the list interesting. I lived there for 2 years. It doesn’t come much more chill than that. Looking at the indices, while Norway is generally low on all the indicators, it’s maxed out on weapons exports and weapons imports. Not sure why that is? Because NATO traffics through there a bunch? Meanwhile, next door Sweden ranks lower in these categories, even though Saab makes air fighters and the like. Weird numbers indeed.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dopa42365 1y ago> Norway experienced the largest deterioration in peacefulness in the region, which was primarily caused by a substantial deterioration on the Militarisation domain. The military expenditure (% GDP) indicator deteriorated by 31.1 per cent and the weapons exports indicator deteriorated by 145 per cent. In 2024, the government unanimously adopted a new long-term defence strategy that will substantially increase the total defence budget over the next 12 years.15 The Safety and Security domain saw a slight improvement of 0.08 per cent while all the indicators in the Ongoing Conflict domain had no change. Despite its fall in overall peacefulness, Norway has the second most peaceful ranking in the world on the Safety and Security domain.
- magnio 1y agoHow the hell is Nepal more peaceful than China or Bolivia? Last week the country has had extremely violent protests, with widespread vandalism and arson leading to inadvertent murder of political leaders, as well as many prison breakouts.
- c54 1y agoThe police also killed 19 people but your comment doesn’t mention that. In addition the military has not taken over, but currently seems to be honoring the demand of the protestors for new leadership and addressing the widespread corruption in the nation. It’s too early to call, to be sure. But I’m hopeful that there can be a peaceful transition from here towards something better for Nepal.
- dudus 1y agoBolívia is a crazy scary place
- stavros 1y agoApparently not as scary as 80 other places.
- Stevvo 1y agoIf you click on a county it gives you a breakdown. China scored 5/5 for Nuclear and Heavy weapons, 4.5/5 for political terror, and 4/5 for neighboring country relations.
- manquer 1y agoI cannot comment on the methodology, but this report was published in June 2025 and the report appendix mentions it covers 2024 (presumably calendar). The recent protests would have not been covered in this edition.
- notepad0x90 1y agoThat's just last week though. outliers don't dictate the average.
- 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- narrator 1y agoPapua New Guinea more peaceful than the United States, huh? Even experienced travel vloggers barely visit that country because of how much violence there is.
- yreew 1y agoDo you realize how much violence there is in the US? The assassination of Charlie Kirk, stabbing of ukrainian refugee in the subway, the beheading of an indian man in Dallas. And those are just this month.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- XorNot 1y agoHave you even read any news reports from PNG? Checked out any local papers?
- TheDong 1y agoSure Papua New Guinea scores 5/5 on the "Violent Crime" assessment (to the US's 2/5), but the US incarceration rate is 5/5, while Papua New Guinea only scores 1.5/5. The US also has much more weapons exports, and external military involvement. People deciding where to travel are largely thinking about "violent crime" levels moreso than "how many fighter jets does this country sell" This report tries to also take into account things like "Military size, expenditure, and weapon exports", which surely indicates a non-peaceful nation, even if on the ground citizens can live peacefully. If the definition of "peace" includes nation-level involvement in conflict, then I think it's very fair to argue that the US isn't a peaceful country. Papua New Guinea is not providing significant military support to multiple wars at once. The US certainly is.
- armadsen 1y agoHard to take this too seriously when the US is way below war torn countries in Africa.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoThe raw data behind the index is available. Which points in the scoring do you believe not accurate and why?
- makeitdouble 1y ago"the country I live in can't be that bad" is a feeling that can be hard to shake. Even taking into account selection bias.
- armadsen 1y agoI’ve spent significant time in Africa. South Africa is higher than the US despite being a place where everyone has razor wire topped walls around their houses, and having the 5th highest murder rate in the world. The US has problems. I myself was the victim of a violent robbery 15 years ago. But the idea that it’s less peaceful than South Africa, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, and only marginally more peaceful than Haiti? Come on…
- inkcapmushroom 1y agoThe index is not just about "how peaceful is the average citizen's life", which is one part of it, but also includes other things like how many wars the country participates in, how much of their government budget goes to military, etc. You shouldn't get a good "Global Peace Index Score" while exporting violence across the globe.
- SapporoChris 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_wars_involving_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_wars_involving_the_Un... United States is nearly always in conflict to the point that it is difficult to find a year where USA is not involved in a conflict.
- renewiltord 1y agoConsidering America polices the waves, George Orwell’s quip comes to mind > Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf
- ipnon 1y agoYou should watch Patlabor 2.
- phyphy 1y agoIreland as #2 with all these attacks on indians?
- leosanchez 1y agoDo you have any stats on how many Indians were attacked in Ireland ?
- leosanchez 1y agoMy bad. looks like there are multiple attacks not just random one-off ones.
- ipnon 1y agoThis is the NGO equivalent of vibe coding. The methodology is wrong, the results don’t make any sense, but it feels right. Ship it!
- bryanthompson 1y agoas long as it gets those blob dollars!
- js8 1y agoMost of the composite indexes of this kind are similarly meaningless. It's certainly not just the domain of NGOs. But to be fair, if it makes people to stop and look why they have different preconceived ideas, I think it's a positive. For example I didn't know that Norway is so militaristic.
- dang 1y ago"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ipnon 1y agoWell, I’m simply making the point that until recently programming required a certain amount of rigor and precision that is no longer necessary because of AI. And that now we can do the sort of hand-wavy, p-hacky work that has been available to social scientists for decades.
- richardfeynman 1y agoI live in New Zealand. Very peaceful. Funny to see Ireland above it.
- nl 1y agoWorth noting that "peace" here doesn't mean "safe to live in". Instead it includes both internal conflict, but also things like military preparedness and access to heavy and nuclear weapons. That's why unsafe but underdeveloped nations rank higher than some countries that are often considered domestically safe.
- never_inline 1y agoLogically one should more safer to live in a country which has nukes, no?
- teleforce 1y agoThere's a very popular saying, "Live by the sword, die by the sword", and it probably applies for those with the nukes.
- nl 1y agoDepends on your definition of safe. Both Russia and the US have nukes but have been involved in fairly large scale wars during the last 20 years.
- never_inline 1y agoSir, I live in a "developing" (that designation is forever) country, where traffic is uncontrollable and haphazard, stray dogs roam under the protection of the government, and a flyover bridge can fall on your head at any point of the road. Hypothetically, I would rather live in a country like the US. I'm sure the machinery of US is good enough to protect its inland citizens when they wage wars on less fortunate ones for whatever reason. Russia is a different matter. I get it.
- xg15 1y agoYeah, it seems more like a "warmongering index", something like "belligerent intent * amount of military power to realize that intent". At least that would explain how "Palestine" ranks as (slightly) more peaceful than Israel even though it's probably one of the most "unsafe" places on the planet right now. Also Russia has the highest score but has neither the world's most powerful military nor would it be the least safe country to live in. But it likely is the country with the largest army that is currently engaged in open, offensive warfare. It's a useful thing to measure for sure, but if that's what's measured, shouldn't there be more focus on the alliances and power relations between the countries? E.g. all the countries are listed individually here, but some are members of NATO, some of BRICS or SCO, some have bilateral military agreements, etc. How would this deal with "proxy conflicts" and non-state actors? If this had been published a few years before, would the breakaway Donbass republics have counted as countries? (If yes, they might even have counted as relatively "peaceful" as there was no reason for them to attack anything - their existence was the attack) Would Hezbollah be counted towards Lebanon, towards Iran, towards Palestine or not counted at all?
- tptacek 1y agoCan anyone speak to any practical policy decision any organization or state has ever made in response to this particular index?
- PaulKeeble 1y agoI feel like the target audience for this, the freedom and democracy and crime indexes etc is the citizens of the world not the current leaders. Its about informing people that better and safer exists.
- 1270018080 1y agoA funny one is the "Positive Peace Index" "Positive Peace is defined as the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. The Positive Peace Index measures the level of societal resilience of a nation or region according." And the United States scores very high. Losing a bit of credibility there.
- aeon_ai 1y agoI don't know if this is happening for anyone else, but Greenland is missing, which is deeply and darkly amusing for many reasons, least of all the size of the omission.
- SapporoChris 1y agoNot an omission, Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark. Denmark is listed.
- aeon_ai 1y agoGreenland is an autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark that, at least as rendered on my screen, is missing from the map entirely.
- wodenokoto 1y agoI don’t know where you are looking, but Greenland is on the map on page 8 and colored gray to represent “not included”
- itake 1y agoI guess territories get a free pass. Puerto Rico is also grey.
- eqvinox 1y agoAt only 163 entries of ca. 200 countries, a whole bunch of stuff is missing. Andorra as well, for example.
- koiueo 1y agoUkraine is right near the russia at the bottom. The russia had started over a dozen wars and committed multiple genocides, one of which is globally recognized, all in just the last hundred years. Ukraine had only been defending in at least the last three centuries. This rating is bs, because the methodology doesn't make sense.
- lovelearning 1y agoSuch reports should drop the idea of ranking countries and instead focus on the rise or fall in per-country scores relative to their previous scores. Whenever countries are ranked against each other, discussions inevitably focus on the relative ranks and ignore the underlying causes of any drop in scores. When a country moves up in rank mostly because some other countries moved down, it feels odd to the people there who wonder why they ranked higher without any improvements on the ground. Nationalist governments tend to claim the higher rank is because of their policies, knowing that their people most likely won't study the changes in score components of previous years.
- Yizahi 1y agoAnd adding to that, at minimum countries need to be evaluated by their parts. In most of the countries currently at war there are parts were it is relatively safe (but still worse than at peace time), and some parts where it is literally hell. Averaging them all doesn't make sense really.
- tptacek 1y agoI feel like that's basically the whole idea of these kinds of reports already: to create a news hook based on shifts in the ranking.
- captn3m0 1y agoSeems to be a lagging indicator. Nepal sits at 1.99 (and yellow, middle of the range).
- itake 1y agoyeah, and Thailand and Cambodia currently have a border dispute with military engagements resulting in death of soldiers and attacks on civilian buildings, with both sides activating their military in response. and yet they are more peaceful than the USA. The border dispute has been going on for decades though, but just recently escalated to deaths.
- nwhnwh 1y ago:yawningface:
- BrenBarn 1y agoThis is a nitpick but it's a bit awkward to call something "Global Peace Index" and then have it be a number where lower scores indicate more peace. It seems like it would make more sense to invert the scores.
- palijer 1y agoA lot of indexes and measurements are like this though when there is a potentially infinite range on one side. Erdős numbers for instance, a higher number indicates less distance to Erdős.
- BrenBarn 1y agoMaybe. I think one thing that contributes to my interpretation is that "peace" is something you can have more or less of, but you can't have more or less Erdős. So seeing "Erdős number" I just think "measuring something about Erdős", but seeing "peace index" I get a slightly more specific feeling of "measuring the amount/quantity/duration of peace".
- gethly 1y agoQuite a different list when we compare crime/safety https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp