Iceland Most Peaceful...Again

The Global Peace Index measures 23 quantitative and qualitative indicators including military expenditure, relations with neighbouring countries, human rights, prison population and murder rates to find the most and least peaceful countries in the world and as usual 2023 ended with Iceland at the top of the peaceful pile with Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand and Austria making up the rest of the top 5.
Unsurprisingly Afghanistan is at number 163 and the least peaceful along with Yemen and Syria with Ukraine recording the largest fall, down 14 places to 157th place.
The Peace Index counted 91 countries now involved in some form of conflict, with the Middle East and North Africa the world’s least peaceful region and Europe the most peaceful region.
Amazingly, despite everything they have suffered, Palestine is ranked at 134th, only 3 places below the United States of America, while Israel stands at a lowly 143rd, only two places above Myanmar who also stand accused of Genocide.
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.
The UK are the highest at 36, then France at 67, China is 80th, USA 131st and Russia are inside the bottom 10 in 158th place so maybe we should consider removing the bizarre UN Veto these countries hold at the UN (and pull out whenever their own interests are of concern) and let the people in Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Dublin, Wellington and Vienna run world affairs for a while.