Sri Lanka ranks 110 in Global Peace Index out of 162 countries

Sri Lanka ranks at 110th place in this year’s Global Peace Index (GPI) which ranked 162 nations according to their level of peace.

The index, released for this year on Tuesday, is composed of 22 qualitative and quantitative indicators of three main themes – level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic or international conflict, and the degree of militarisation.

In Sri Lanka, both internal and external peace indicators weighed negatively on the overall score, the report said.

The existing divisions in society, increased attacks on the media and rising anti-Muslim sentiment have impacted the peace scores for the country, the report said.

Sri Lanka has however, improved 9% from 2008 placing it at the fifth place of the top most improved countries

In the South Asian region Sri Lanka ranked at fourth behind Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh in the order and one place above India which ranked at 141. Pakistan and Afghanistan ranked below India in that order.

Iceland was the most peaceful in this year’s list and New Zealand at third and Japan at sixth topped the Asia-Pacific region.

The most peaceful region of the world continues to be Europe while the least peaceful region is South Asia.