Institute for Economics and Peace – Peacefulness in Europe reaches an historic high – The Middle East is spiralling into deepening violence – See The 2015 Global Peace Index

• “Many OECD countries reached historically high levels of peace, boosted by reductions in homicide rates, levels of military expenditure and military engagements.
  Iceland tops the Index as the most peaceful country in the world , Syria is the least peaceful.
• MENA’s peace now the lowest since 2008, as the region falls to the bottom of the Index for the first time.
• Growth in terrorist activity spilled over from MENA into Sub-Saharan Africa with largest increases recorded in Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger.
• The intensity of armed conflict increased dramatically, with the number of people killed in conflicts globally rising more than 3.5 times, from 49,000 in 2010 to 180,000 in 2014.
• Total deaths from terrorism in 2014 increased by 9% to an estimated 20,000.
• Almost 1% of the world’s population now refugees or internally displaced (IDPs) , the highest level since 1945, and numbers expected to increase.
• The impact of violence on the global economy reached US$14.3 trillion or 13.4% of global GDP in the last year, equivalent to the combined economies of Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the UK.”