The Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace has just released its 16th edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI) report. They rank 163 independent states and territories based on ‘23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources’, as they write in their report. The three main areas of examination are societal safety and security, as in the domestic violent crime rate; as well as the ongoing domestic and international conflicts, and the degree of militarisation.
On this list of 163 nations,
Hungary was ranked 13th, with a peace index of 1.411.
The country also moved up two spots since the lEP report a year ago, released in June 2022. Among European nations per se, we are ranked ninth. And in terms of the militarisation domain, we are doing even better, sitting at the #4 spot in the worldwide rankings.
In the militerisation domain, the IEP has considered factors such as armed personnel rates, peacekeeping funding contributions, the levels of nuclear and heavy weaponry, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, and, finally, weapon exports. Recently, also in the wake of the Russo-Ukrainian war breaking out in a neighbouring country, the Orbán administration has started a major military modernisation and expansion programme, which has yielded results already.
PM Orbán is also one of the most prominent proponents of the start of peace negotiations in the Eastern European war,
certainly among the NATO leaders. The results of this report, produced by a prestigious international think tank, reinforce that his constant talk of peace is not just empty rhetoric.
Iceland ended up topping the Peace Index ranking. The Nordic island nation has been holding the title of most peaceful position since 2008. It is followed by New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark and Austria, in that order. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Afghanistan coming in last. With the disastrous withdrawal of US forces in the autumn of 2021, the Taliban are now in control of most of the territory of the country. Yemen and Syria only outrank it barely; while Russia, the aggressor nation of the most significant European military conflict in recent history, is ranked 160th out of 163 countries.
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