Although you may not believe it when you recall Bjork bouncing the head of a journalist off the tiled floor of an airport, but Iceland is the world's most peaceful country according to the findings of the Global Peace Index Survey.
The index studied 140 countries for such indicators as military expenditure, relations with neighbouring countries, human rights, prison population and murder rates to award an overall score and ranking.
Following Iceland in top spot is Denmark, Norway, New Zealand and then Japan. Canada are 11th, Sweden 13th and then it is a long drop to 49th place for the United Kingdom and even further down the page to 97th for the USA. The five worst places to book a package tour are Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan and Israel.
Interestingly, the five permanent members of the UN who have the final say in the most important decisions concerning global war and peace do not come out very well from the survey.
France are the highest at 36, then the UK (49), China (67), USA (97) and Russia are inside the bottom 10 in 131st place. Maybe we should consider letting the Scandinavians run world affairs for a while.
6 comments:
I was surprised the UK was 49th. Pleased NZ is doing well!
"relations with neighboring countries"
I understand Iceland has fabulous relations with their neighbors, being fish and all, I don't think the diplomacy is too much one sided.
I thought we would be slumped somewhere towards the bottom also Ruth but your cou7ntry did well, you are the most peaceful place in the southern hemisphere.
Hard to negotiate with fish Cody, they just don't listen.
Lucy, you have a brilliant idea. How about letting maybe the top ten most peaceful countries handle things for a while? Couldn't hurt, might help.
"you are the most peaceful place in the southern hemisphere."
But that's just the physical place, Lucy: You should check out some of the aggression & violence on certain New Zealand blogs...
Or, on second thoughts, you probably shouldn't :-/
I have looked around some of the Australian blogs Cheezy and they were like a tourettes meeting place, i got banned from a few for not agreeing with them after i got lightly sprinkled with abuse. I will take a look at some of the more spicey New Zealand ones though.
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