The Foreign Press Association | Pre-briefing on the Global Peace Index

Pre-briefing on the Global Peace Index

at Tue May 8 16:02:08 2007

Australian philanthropist Steve Killelea and Dafne Ter-Sakarian from the Economist Intelligence Unit did a pre-briefing today for the launch of the Global Peace Index, the first study to rank 120 nations - from Austria to Zambia - according to their peacefulness. Killelea teamed up with the Economist Intelligence Unit to produce this ground-breaking study which covers measurements of both the internal peacefulness of nations as well as their external peacefulness.

The study uses 24 indicators including the levels of violence within a country, organized crime, the number of people in prison, and military expenditure. The Index has also been correlated against a range of social development indicators including democracy, transparency, education and well-being to better understand the drivers that create and sustain peace.

The project’s ambition is to go beyond a crude measure of wars – and systematically explore the texture of peace. The hope is that it will provide a quantitative measure of peacefulness that will provide a greater understanding of the mechanisms that nurture peace to inspire world leaders and governments to further action.

The research was compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit through extensive research from their analysts around the globe. The results and the country rankings will be launched in Washington, London and Sydney on May 30th 2007.

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Dana Wright

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