Qatar ‘most peaceful’ Middle Eastern state 17, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Middle East, Qatar.Tags: conflict, Global peace index, Most peaceful states, peace
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The global peace index ranks countries according to how peaceful they are using a raft of statistics ranging from the number of homicides per 100,000 people to the number of inter-state conflicts to the number of internal security officers per 100,000. In short, it provides a reasonably accurate tabulation of the relative peacefulness of states.
In this year’s rankings Qatar came top of all Middle Eastern states as the most peaceful, pipping Oman by 5 places, finishing an impressive 16th, one ahead of Switzerland. Here’s the GCC breakdown.
| 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | |
| Qatar | 30 | 33 | 16 |
| Saudi | 90 | 108 | 109 |
| UAE | 38 | 42 | 40 |
| Kuwait | 46 | 45 | 42 |
| Bahrain | 62 | 74 | 69 |
| Oman | 22 | 25 | 21 |
| 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | |
| Qatar | 30 | 33 | 16 |
| Saudi | 90 | 108 | 109 |
| UAE | 38 | 42 | 40 |
| Kuwait | 46 | 45 | 42 |
| Bahrain | 62 | 74 | 69 |
| Oman | 22 | 25 | 21 |
The Gulf blog 
Very interesting. I actually think Qatar deserves an even higher ranking. With regards to violent crimes it definitely safer than Scandinavian countries such as Denmark and Sweden.
I believe it has to with some of the parameters being a bit ambiguous. Take the “Number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people” for example. Does that really tell anything about the level of security and peacefulness? On one hand you could claim that a high number of security officers and police reflects that there is a lot of security threats to be dealt with and on the other hand you could claim that the threat of violence and conflict is minimal as the security forces provides a strong preventive measure. The same could be said of a lot of other parameters, such as “Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP”, which I definitely pulls Qatar down a lot.
Anyways, I still think it’s quite accurate vis-vis other countries in the region.