Bangladesh is more peaceful than neighbouring India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bhutan, according to the latest Global Peace Index. Despite daily criminal incidents and political unrest, Bangladesh is a much more peaceful country compared to most of its neighbours when looked at from a global perspective. In the SAARC countries, only Bhutan (ranked 13) and Nepal (ranked 78) have a higher score than Bangladesh. Bangladesh is currently 83rd on the 163-strong list and scored 2.045 on the GPI index to advance from 84th position the previous year. India is in the lower stairs at 141st position while Pakistan is even lower at 153, Sri Lanka is at 97 and Afghanistan is positioned at 160. The Maldives was not included in the survey.
The GPI is based on data collected from UN and Economic Intelligence Unit surveys that focused on internal conflicts, percentage of armed civilians, political instability, and homicide rates among 21 identifiers.
According to the GPI, Iceland ranked the top position and scored 1.192 while Syria went to the bottom scoring 3.806.
The index pointed out that terrorism is at an all time high and global peace is declining rapidly. Another major finding was that refugees and internally displaced populations have doubled from 2007 to 2015 – 60 million in total. The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) based in Sidney, Australia published the GPI after carrying out survey on 163 countries.