Oman ranked among most peaceful Arab countries

SYDNEY: The Sultanate has been ranked 5th on the Arab level and 73th on the world level at Global Peace Index (GPI), which ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness.

Produced by the Australia based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), the GPI is the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness.

The Sultanate, which earned 1,984 points, was ranked 1st on the Arab level for the absence of internal conflict and sub-external conflict. It was ranked fourth on the Arab level at the social security and peace index.

Iceland topped the list of GPI followed by New Zealand, Austria, Portugal, Denmark, Canada, Czech and Singapore.

The second version of GPI for 2018 pointed out that the world has become less peaceful that it was at any time during the past decades.

The index measures the peace state by using three fields namely the level of security and social peace, the internal and external conflict and the degree of militarisation. The Global Peace Index 2018 report finds that the global level of peace has deteriorated by 0.27 per cent over the last year. This is the fourth successive year of deterioration, finding that 92 countries have deteriorated, while 71 countries have improved.

The report reveals a world in which tensions, conflicts and crises that have emerged over the past decade remain unresolved, causing a gradual, sustained decline in global levels of peacefulness.