The world's most peaceful countries named

Baku. 1 June. REPORT.AZ/ The 2017 Global Peace Index finds that the world became more peaceful last year. The improvement in peacefulness in 2017 is the first increase since the 2014 GPI.

Report informs citing TASS, research by the Institute for Economics and Peace declares, which ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness. The GPI covers 99.7 per cent of the world’s population.

Iceland remains the most peaceful country in the world, a position it has held since 2008. It is joined at the top of the index by New Zealand, Portugal, all of which were ranked highly in last year’s GPI.  

Azerbaijan ranks the 132nd, Russia the 151st.

Syria remains the world’s least peaceful country for the second successive year, preceded by Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, and Yemen. Iraq (161st) and Afghanistan (162nd) have also remained amongst the bottom five countries of the index for the past five years. South Sudan is now the fourth least peaceful country and has experienced a steady decline in recent years. Yemen’s deterioration has it ranked as the fifth least peaceful country for the first time in 2017.

The peace index is based on the study of such factors as level of social unity, respect for human rights, political and economic stability, level of terrorist threat and participation of a country in hostilities.