TANZANIA continued to cement its status as a beacon of peace in the region after it climbed six places to claim the most peaceful country slot within the East African Community (EAC).
According to the Global Peace Index 2020 (GPI), the country also posted an overall score of 1.85 points to become the seventh and 52nd most peaceful country in Africa and the world respectively.
Rwanda is pitched at position 14, having registered an overall score of 2.049 points, ranking 81st in the world while Uganda ranks third regionally and 109th globally with a 2.202 score.
The neighbouring country of Kenya comes fourth within the EAC bloc, averaging 2.375 points and is pitched at number 125 globally.
Following closely is Burundi with 2.506 points where it ranks 132 globally while South Sudan tails the region having amassed a score of 3.447.
The findings, which have been released by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) come as Tanzania continues to contribute to uniformed UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in Lebanon.
Tanzania’s contributions are largely informed by its history of African liberation, conflict prevention and peace processes, especially in African countries.
Mauritius is the first peaceful country in Sub-Saharan Africa followed by Botswana, Ghana, Zambia, Sierra Leone and Senegal, while the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Sudan are the least peaceful countries on the continent According to the GPI’s 14th edition which ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness, Africa posted a regional average score of 2.264 points. 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, Austria, Portugal, and Denmark. Afghanistan is the least peaceful country in the world for the second year in a row, followed by Syria and Iraq.
The GPI covers 99.7 per cent of the world’s population, using 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources, and measures the state of peace across three domains: the level of Societal Safety and Security; the extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict; and the degree of Militarisation.
In addition to presenting the findings from the 2020 GPI, this year’s report includes an analysis of the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on peace, including Positive Peace: the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.
It examines how the impact of the pandemic, and in particular its economic consequences will increase the risk of severe deteriorations in Positive Peace over the next few years, and also examines which countries are best placed to recover from the shock.
The index further reveals that the average level of global peacefulness deteriorated 0.34 per cent on the 2020 GPI.
This is the ninth time in the last 12 years that global peacefulness has deteriorated. According to the findings, in the past year 80 countries recorded deteriorations in peacefulness, while 81 recorded improvements.
Source: Daily News
MY TAKE: Mbona Kenya mnatumia pesa nyingi sana kugharamia vifaa vya kisasa vya ulinzi na usalama wa nchi yenu, vipi mnalingana na Burundi?. Ile tabia ya kulinganisha uimara wa jeshi na POLISI kwa kulinganisha ukubwa wa bajeti vinavyotengewa bado mtaendelea kuutumia kama kigezo cha POLISI na jeshi bora?