Mauritius ranks 1st in Africa and 20th worldwide in terms of peaceful countries, according to the ‘Global Peace Index 2018: Measuring Peace in a Complex World’ issued by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP).

The report compares 163 independent states and territories (99.7 per cent of the world’s population) on their level of peacefulness. It uses 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources, and measures the state of peace using three thematic domains: the level of Societal Safety and Security; the extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict; and the degree of Militarisation.

It is worth noting that Mauritius ranks above half of European countries that took part in the survey and also above the five Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council which include (UK (57th), France (61st), China (112th), USA (121th) and Russia (154th). In addition, Mauritius is one of the only five countries to get a perfect score in the domestic and international conflict domain, along with Botswana, Brazil, Chili, and Uruguay.

In the African region, the top five most peaceful countries comprise Mauritius followed by Botswana (ranked 29th the worldwide), Sierra Leone (35th), Madagascar (38th) and Ghana (41st). African countries that marked the best improvement in ranks at a global level include Gambia which topped the list moving up the rankings from 111th in 2017 to 76th in 2018 (+35 places), followed by Liberia which moved to the 63rd place (+27 places).

Sub–Saharan Africa’s ranking compared to the previous year remains unchanged at number 6, despite a slight decrease in its overall score. Six of the top seven improvers were West African countries.

At the global level, Iceland tops the list for the 10th consecutive year, followed by New Zealand, Austria, Portugal and Denmark. The report notes that compared to last year, 71 countries are more peaceful, 92 countries were less peaceful, and that the overall trend is an average deterioration of 0.27 per cent.

The full 2018 Global Peace Index Report can be accessed here