Malaysia and Singapore now rank within the world’s top 20 most peaceful countries

The latest edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI) published by The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) has ranked two Southeast Asian countries within the world’s top 20 most peaceful nations. In ninth place is Singapore, which the report classes as having a “very high” state of peace, while Malaysia sits 18th in the rankings, holding a state of peace that the IEP considers “high”. In the report’s executive summary, the GPI covers 163 countries comprising 99.

7 percent of the world’s population, with the rankings for peace determined by three major factors or domains: The level of each country’s societal safety and security , the extent of ongoing domestic and international conflict , and the degree of militarization . The domains are defined in the graphic below: Overall, it was noted that the average level of global peacefulness deteriorated by a slight 0. 3 percent, which made it the 11th count of peace deterioration within the past fourteen years.

90 countries recorded improvements, 71 saw deteriorations, while two remained stable throughout the last year — a trend that indicates how countries tend to deteriorate much faster than they improve. “In the past 14 years, peacefulness has fallen, with the average country score deteriorating by 3. 2 percent,” the report said.

“Of the 163 countries in the GPI, 84 recorded deteriorations, while 77 recorded improvements, and two recorded no change in score. 15 of the 23 GPI indicators deteriorated between 2008 and 2021 while eight improved. ” Here are the full rankings as relayed in the report: When it came to domains determining each country’s score, the GPI said that two of the domains — “ongoing conflict” and “safety and security” — had continuously fallen since 2008, although the “militarization” domain had seen an improvement for this iteration, with Malaysia among the top five countries seeing the most improvement in this regard.

Meanwhile, Singapore featured in the top five for the other two domains. In the Asia Pacific region, the report noted an overall slight improvement in peacefulness by 0. 008 points (0.

4 percent) over the past year — the first record of improvement in three years. This uptick was attributed to the rising score in all three domains across all Asia-Pacific countries, with the largest increase occurring in the “safety and security” domain. In the report, the performances of several Southeast Asian countries were especially mentioned.

Behind New Zealand, Singapore ranked as the second-most peaceful nation in the region for the third year running, and — according to the GPI — saw its militarization score improve significantly, with “large improvements particularly in nuclear and heavy weapons as well as weapons exports between 2021 and 2022”. The Philippines was noted as the country with the biggest improvement in the region, owing to positive changes in political stability, terrorism impact, and homicide rates. Despite these improvements, however, the country still continues to be the third-least peaceful country in the region for the second consecutive year.

The GPI also specially mentioned Thailand as having its best score since the inception of the GPI, as well as having the region’s second-highest score improvement in the previous period. “Thailand is now amongst the top 100 most peaceful nations globally, with improvements observable across all three domains,” the report said. “This comes after a period of significant instability coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic and cultivating in anti-government demonstrations throughout 2020 and 2021.

” Finally, Myanmar recorded the largest drop in peacefulness regionally, with the country still struggling to deal with the military coup that took place in early 2021. “There were large deteriorations in all domains in 2022 after the coup continues to impact the peacefulness of the nation, with large increases in civil unrest and violent crime,” the report said. “Hundreds of people have been killed and security forces have been accused of human rights abuses, including murder, enforced disappearances, persecution, and genocide.

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