The UAE ranks last in weapons imports in the world, despite seeing an improvement in this indicator over the decade..
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According to the Global Peace Index 2016 Report, Ukraine is on the 156th place, i.e.it is in the second place after Yemen in the rating of fall, which dropped to 158th place during the year. At nine percent of GDP this was ranked 61st in the world.
The study, by worldwide think-tank the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) finds that peace declined at a faster rate than in the previous year.
The 10th edition of the GPI highlights a stark and growing inequality in global levels of peacefulness as the gap between the most and least peaceful countries continues to widen. The five countries whose scores worsened the most a year ago were Yemen, Ukraine, Turkey, Libya and Bahrain.
According to a new study, violence in the Middle East increased a year ago, while the rest of the world largely got safer. The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have been going for well over a decade, then it spilled into Syria in 2011, and afterwards into Libya and Yemen.
The picture in sub-Saharan Africa is mixed: although Chad, Mauritania and Niger have all improved their relations with neighbouring countries, Islamist terrorist groups such as Boko Haram and continuing violence in South Sudan have damaged efforts to bring peace and stability.
Within South Asia, Bhutan was ranked best (13th overall rank), while India was fifth followed by Pakistan at sixth (overall 153rd) and Afghanistan at sixth place (global 160th).
And the five countries whose scores worsened the most previous year included Ukraine, Turkey, Libya, and Bahrain. This represents 13.3 percent of world GDP, or $1,876 per person.
The Institute suggests that Armenia’s National Cost of Violence stood at about $1,5 billion in the past year.
The world’s expensive slide into violence and unrest continued a year ago, with conflict, terrorism and political instability costing the global economy $13.6tn (£9.3tn), according to the annual global peace index.
The indicator which improved the most in the past year was funding for United Nations peacekeeping operations, which reached record highs in 2016, IEP said.
“In 2015, violence containment expenditure in Qatar totalled $18.2 billion PPP, an increase of 1.5 times from 2008”. The largest improvement since past year occurred in Central America and the Caribbean, while South America also made progress in its levels of peacefulness. MENA, which was already ranked the lowest in the 2015 GPI, had the biggest deterioration in peace this year, as the civil wars in Syria and Yemen deepened and led to increased external intervention.
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The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), which produces the index, said Yemen was the “standout example” of a breakdown of peace in the Middle East that has seen the world as a whole become a more risky place in 2016 than at any point in the past decade. It finds that, while there is some existing data to track progress and therefore hold member states accountable to meeting their targets, serious investment will need to be made to measure the goals.
