Peace index: SA down 15 places

2009-06-04 19:05

Johannesburg - South Africa's 15-place drop down the 2009 Global Peace Index was a call to common action, said the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre in Cape Town on Thursday.

"As South Africans, we should regard the report and similar reflections of our international standing as a call to collective action," the centre's chief executive officer Nomfundo Walaza said in a statement.

"While we find it distressing that some of the ground gained by South Africa during its largely peaceful transition to democracy has been lost, it should spur disparate roleplayers to act on it."

The country still had the potential to be a beacon of conciliation for Africa and the world, she said.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, supports the index, which was started three years ago by Australian technology entrepreneur and philanthropist Steve Killelea.

SA ranked 123 out of 144 countries

The GPI forms part of the Institute for Economics and Peace, a global think-tank on the relationship between economics, business and peace, and is calculated on the institute's behalf by the Economist Intelligence Unit and its network of country analysts.

This year, South Africa was ranked 123 out of 144 countries, obtaining unfavourable scores for violent crime; murders; access to weapons; organised internal conflict; perceptions of criminality; respect for human rights; and the likelihood of violent demonstrations.

Favourable indicators were: the number of heavy weapons, volume of major conventional weapons exported and imported, number of displaced people, estimated number of deaths from organised external conflict, potential for terrorist acts, military expenditure, number of armed services personnel and United Nations funding.

Walaza said no single grouping could rectify the problems behind the deterioration in South Africa's international standing.

She said it was important to encourage constructive dialogue on the problems facing the country.

NZ most peaceful

The CPI ranked South Africa 21 out of 31 countries in Africa, behind Botswana, Malawi and Gabon, ranked top three, and ahead of countries including Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia.

New Zealand topped the overall rankings as the world's most peaceful country, followed by Denmark and Norway.

The country ranked least at peace was Iraq - for the third year running.

Also at the bottom end of the rankings were Afghanistan and Somalia.

- SAPA