This past week I have mostly been thinking about the perception and measurement of insecurity in any given place. I am soon to embark on a journey around India and when asking other people for travel tips I find myself asking whether they found it dangerous or not. Rather inevitably and unhelpfully, the responses have varied greatly. Given that my perception of safety in the UK has been constantly altered by my experiences elsewhere (as mentioned in my previous blog post) I have to recognise that my impressions of security in a place are highly susceptible to change and are highly unlikely to be a sound judgement. Try searching for a ‘funny video’ online – I’m sure you’ll reap hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of ‘funny’ videos according to those who have uploaded them, but how many of those do you actually find funny? I try and remind myself of this when I read ‘violent Guatemala’ or similar headlines in the media. So how are we to know how secure a place is?
Since writing my last post, it has become startlingly obvious that my emphasis on trust as a means of overcoming insecurity is insubstantial. How on earth do you measure trust? Surely this isn’t a strong enough indicator of insecurity? After a bit of research this weekend, I discovered that there is an index that comes as close as you can get to measuring insecurity – the Global Peace Index (GPI). Interestingly, perceived violence is listed among the 23 indicators used to compile the GPI scores after surveying a sample of the population, so, fortunately, I wasn’t entirely off-track to list trust among my own. As far as I’m concerned, the world economy seems to function according to perceptions and speculations so it only seems fair to include this as an indicator.
Other important data used is taken from measuring a nation’s level of military expenditure, its relations with neighbouring countries, and the level of respect for human rights. I’ve been fascinated to learn that this index measures respect and perception alongside expenditure, amongst other values, and then ranks countries against each other. The data used comes from various sources, including the International Institute for Strategic Studies, The World Bank, UN reports, Peace Institutes and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Iceland returned to the top spot as most peaceful country in the world. Although, sadly, this year has seen the world become less peaceful for the third year in a row, and those behind the report have highlighted what it classes as a continuing threat of terrorism as the driving factor behind this decline.
While the UK has risen from 49th position to 26th in the past 5 years, Guatemala has fallen from 93rd to 125th. To look at one of its neighbours, El Salvador has also fallen from 89th to 102nd position, and Mexico has also fallen 43 places. These findings point to the fact that peace is more commonly experienced in more developed countries; Norway, Canada, Denmark, Japan and New Zealand are among the most peaceful in the world. Although it is said that peace is also an indicator of the type of development in a nation, which may reduce the ease of identifying peace in this way, i.e. a larger working class may see an increase in GDP but may not contribute to a more peaceful society in the same way that a more educated work force might.
This is why we see a considerable positive correlation (.42) between the GPI and income inequality. Nations with less income inequality experience higher levels of peace, while inequality sees the opposite occur. Central American and South American nations stand out for this reason. The United States, to my surprise, were ranked in 82nd position. Studies suggest that policies in the United States lean towards reacting to violence, rather than aiming to prevent it, which may explain this ranking.
I think it’s useful to pick out some of the indicators used and the scores that Guatemala was awarded for each to more fully understand how this index operates. The level of violent crime was rated at 5/5, freedom of the press was rated at 20.25%, and its willingness to fight was rated at 3/5. Women in parliament are also counted, and Guatemala scores only 12% for this, alongside its political instability being rated at 2.5/5. The level of perceived criminality in society was rated at 5/5. To take a look at the full listing and to put these into the context of other countries, I suggest you take a look at the complete index for 2011.
As I plan to travel around India shortly, I thought i’d take a look at India’s ranking. Rather shockingly, I found that it is currently in 135th position down from 128th in 2010, which is 10 places lower than Guatemala. Steve Killelea, founder of the GPI, said that “India’s score remains the same on most parameters used to measure peacefulness. Homicide and crime rates in India, too, are a lot lower than many other countries. The fall in rankings is largely due to an increasing perception of criminality in society.” I’ll make sure I report back after my travels to see how true I find this perception to be. Killelea is quoted as saying that public perception of a country is key, and therefore media is paramount. We have to remember that a lot of growth in developing nations comes after injections from foreign investment, and no one is going to invest in a war-ridden country.
Is it wrong of me to so closely relate peace and security? Given the indicators and data used in the GPI, I feel that this is a fair relationship to establish. However, I welcome any comments below as I am always willing to learn more about this issue.
