The 2022 Global Peace Index (GPI) ranks Ghana as the second most peaceful nation in sub-Saharan Africa, behind only Mauritius.
Ghana was also listed as the 40th most peaceful nation in the world by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), an independent, non-profit think tank committed to moving the global attention to peace as a positive, attainable, and quantifiable measure of human well-being and development.
The GPI measures the state of peace across three domains: the level of Societal Safety and Security, the extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict, and the degree of Militarisation in 163 countries representing 99.7 percent of the world’s population utilizing 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly regarded sources.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Mauritius topped the list of sub-Saharan nations, followed by Ghana, The Gambia, Botswana, and Sierra Leone (5th).
The average nation score in Sub-Saharan Africa decreased by 0.022 points, or 1%, on the GPI for 2022, indicating a minor decline in peacefulness. Twenty-one of the 44 nations in the region improved, twenty-two declined, and one stayed stable.
In the Safety and Security and Ongoing Conflict dimensions, the area is less peaceful than the world average, but more peaceful in the Militarisation category.
Civil unrest and political instability increased across the area as a result of five coups, disagreements over election results, and charges of corruption, resulting in an average decline of 6.9% for the political terror index.
The region’s most significant increase in peacefulness happened in Zambia, where the GPI score increased by 3.9%. This was primarily due to an improvement in Zambia’s relations with its neighbors and a 17% decline in military expenditures as a percentage of GDP.
Global index
Iceland remains the world’s most peaceful nation, a distinction it has maintained since 2008.
It is followed by New Zealand (2nd), Ireland (3rd), Denmark (4th), and Austria at the top of the index (5th).
Afghanistan is the world’s least peaceful nation for the sixth year running, followed by Yemen, Syria, Russia, and South Sudan. In the last three years, all of these countries have been among the 10 least peaceful nations.
Russia and Ukraine were two of the five nations with the worst declines in peace, and they were joined by Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Haiti.
All of these declines were the result of ongoing conflict.
Europe is the world’s most tranquil area, since seven of the ten most peaceful nations are situated there.
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Five of the world’s nine regions have been more calm in the last year. The regions of South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) had the greatest growth.
South Asia’s result was driven by a considerable improvement in the area of Ongoing Conflict, as a number of nations saw a decline in the number of fatalities from internal conflicts.
