Jamaica’s Peace Index Ranking

There is always some group doing measurement and comparisons.

I must be a sucker for these, and I cannot seem to help myself but to check out how Jamaica is doing in these surveys.

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The development of the 2009 GPI is overseen by an international team of peace experts and is calculated by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of the Institute for Economics and Peace, using 2008 data from a wide range of respected sources, including the International Institute of Strategic Studies, SIPRI, the World Bank, various United Nations offices and peace institutes.

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It is endorsed by prominent individuals including Nobel Laureates Martti Ahtisaari, the former President of Finland, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, President Jimmy Carter and Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, as well as individuals from the world of business, including Sir Richard Branson..

The index defines peace as the absence of violence., and uses a series of 23 qualitative, and quantitative indicators to do the measurement. With the global recession, they measured an increase in violent conflict and political instability.

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The expected suspects dominated the bottom of the rankings, namely Iraq, Afgananstian, Somalia, Israel (?), and Sudan.  The most peaceful was New Zealand, followed by Denmark, Norway, and Iceland.

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Jamaica ranked 102 in the world, and the US  is ranked 83.  In the Caribbean /Latin America region, we were 16 out of 23.  The most peaceful was Chile, and most violent was Columbia.

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Click to see Jamaica’s ranking details

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From your perspective, what steps can we take to improve our ranking?