{"id":200044,"date":"2017-09-21T18:30:50","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T16:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=200044"},"modified":"2017-09-21T17:20:01","modified_gmt":"2017-09-21T15:20:01","slug":"south-africa-ranks-among-the-most-dangerous-countries-in-the-world-and-its-costing-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/200044\/south-africa-ranks-among-the-most-dangerous-countries-in-the-world-and-its-costing-us\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa ranks among the most dangerous countries in the world – and it’s costing us"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2017 Global Peace Index<\/a><\/strong> by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) shows that levels of peace across the world have improved slightly compared to 2016.<\/p>\n

In many cases it does not feel like the world is a more peaceful following terror attacks in countries like France and the UK, while internal conflicts in the US continue to grab headlines.<\/p>\n

However, the index shows that, on balance, things across the world have improved, with 93 countries becoming more peaceful by its metrics, and 68 becoming less peaceful.<\/p>\n

Over the past 10 years, though, the IEP points out that global peace levels have deteriorated, with a 408% rise in battle deaths, a 247% increase in deaths from terrorism, and the number of refugees doubling in the last decade.<\/p>\n

On the positive side, 72% of countries have reduced their armed forces; 67% have seen a drop in their murder rate (including South Africa); and 65% have reduced military spend as a percentage of GDP.<\/p>\n

Peace and safety in South Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Global Peace Index measures peacefulness according to three broad categories (militarisation, safety and security, and domestic and international conflict), sub-divided into smaller indicators.<\/p>\n

Also factored in is the cost of violence, expressed as a percentage of GDP. Globally, the IEP measured this at 12.6% of GDP, meaning global violence costs\u00a0$14.3 trillion in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.<\/p>\n

According to the report, South Africa ranks as the 123rd most peaceful country in the world, out of 163 countries and districts measured. This puts us on the lower-end of the scale (in the lowest quartile), but still far from war-torn regions like Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n

While South Africa has improved its placement on the index (126th in 2016), the country still remains one of the most dangerous and unsafe countries in the world.<\/p>\n

Across all indicators, the country performs very poorly in six, with a perception of high levels of criminality; easy access to weapons; relatively high levels of political terror and high levels of violent demonstrations.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The two stand-out marks against SA, however, are in terms of violent crime and homicide, which are among the worst in the world.<\/p>\n

This is apparent in the societal safety and security category, where South Africa ranks within the bottom 20 in the world – 18th – while the murder rate makes South Africa the 8th most violent with a rate of 33 per 100,000 people.<\/p>\n

Iraq is seen as the least safe country (just below Syria), while Iceland is ranked as the most safe.<\/p>\n

These levels of violence and insecurity also have a massive impact on the economy, with the IEP measuring the cost of violence in South Africa at 22.3% of GDP, or $144.2 billion (R1.92 trillion) – roughly $2,582 (R34,500) per person.<\/p>\n

This is the 16th highest cost out of all countries in the world. Switzerland has the lowest cost of violence (1.5% of GDP), while Syria carries the highest cost (66.9% of GDP).<\/p>\n

The table below shows the 10 most and least peaceful countries in the world.<\/p>\n

Top 10 most peaceful countries<\/h3>\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
#<\/th>\nCountry<\/th>\nIndex Score<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nIceland<\/td>\n1.111<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nNew Zealand<\/td>\n1.241<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nPortugal<\/td>\n1.258<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nAustria<\/td>\n1.265<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nDenmark<\/td>\n1.337<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>\nCzech Republic<\/td>\n1.360<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>\nSlovenia<\/td>\n1.364<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/td>\nCanada<\/td>\n1.371<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9<\/td>\nSwitzerland<\/td>\n1.373<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10<\/td>\nIreland \/ Japan<\/td>\n1.408<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Top 10 least peaceful countries<\/h3>\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
#<\/th>\nCountry<\/th>\nIndex Score<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
163<\/td>\nSyria<\/td>\n3.814<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
162<\/td>\nAfghanistan<\/td>\n3.567<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
161<\/td>\nIraq<\/td>\n3.556<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
160<\/td>\nSouth Sudan<\/td>\n3.524<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
159<\/td>\nYemen<\/td>\n3.412<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
158<\/td>\nSomalia<\/td>\n3.387<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
157<\/td>\nLibya<\/td>\n3.328<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
155<\/td>\nSudan \/ Central African Republic<\/td>\n3.213<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
154<\/td>\nUkraine<\/td>\n3.184<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
153<\/td>\nDemocratic Republic of the Congo<\/td>\n3.061<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

You can read the full report here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0Cape Town is South Africa\u2019s real crime capital<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While South Africa has improved its placement on the Global Peace Index in 2017, the country still remains one of the most dangerous and unsafest countries in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":161761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200044"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200276,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200044\/revisions\/200276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}