Most Peaceful Countries

The Global Peace Index is a scoring system adopted by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). It identifies and measures 23 different metrics that drive peace in a country. Every year, the non-partisan group ranks 163 countries based on factors such as military expenditure, weapons imports and exports, political terror scale, deaths from internal and external conflict, nuclear and heavy weapons, perceptions of criminality, homicide rate, political instability, violent crime, and demonstrations, among others.

This chart lists the 12 countries at the most peaceful end of the scale for the last 5 years. Iceland has held the #1 spot since the inception of the index in 2008. Nine of the top 12 countries are in Europe, the most peaceful region overall.