Mimi Machakaire
LESOTHO has achieved a “close to high” rating in terms of positive peace, a 2017 Institute for Economics and Peace report has revealed.
The Institute for Economics and Peace, which made use of data and statistics from various multi-lateral institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations agencies, gave Lesotho a rating of 3.34 which is just 0.06 points shy of the ‘high’ positive peace category.
Lesotho performed very well with only 10 African countries achieving a higher ranking. These are Mauritius (with a score of 2.2), Botswana (2.51), Namibia (2.81), South Africa (2.9), Ghana (2.93), Tunisia (2.97), Morocco (3.05), Senegal (3.24), Rwanda (3.27) and Swaziland (3.32).
The institute defines positive as “the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies”. It assessed eight criteria which it calls the eight pillars of positive peace to come up with its ranking of Lesotho and 162 other countries.
These are sound business environment, free flow of information, good relations with neighbours, high levels of human capital, equitable distribution of resources, well?functioning government, acceptance of the rights of others and low levels of corruption.
Some of the institute’s key findings were:
- Over the past decade Positive Peace has improved by 1.86 per cent globally.
- The three regions of Russia and Eurasia, Asia-Pacific, and South Asia had the largest improvements at 4.7 per cent, 3.3 per cent and 3.2 per cent respectively.
- The largest improvements in Positive Peace occurred in Cote d’Ivoire, Georgia, Rwanda, Kyrgyz
- Republic, and Saudi Arabia. These countries however began from low levels of Positive Peace in
- The largest deteriorations in Positive Peace occurred in Central African Republic, Yemen, Equatorial Guinea, Greece, and Syria.
- When press freedoms deteriorate, combined with increases in corruption and group grievances, then the onset of violent organised conflict is more likely.
Founded in 2007 by information technology entrepreneur, Steve Killelea, the Institute for Economics and Peace is one of the world’s leading think tanks dedicated to developing metrics to analyse peace and to quantify its economic value.
It does this by developing global and national indices, calculating the economic cost of violence, analysing country level risk and understanding positive peace.
“The (institute’s) research is used extensively by governments, academic institutions, think tanks, non-governmental organisations and by intergovernmental institutions such as the OECD, The Commonwealth Secretariat, the World Bank and the United Nations,” the institute states on its website.
The Institute for Economics and Peace is based in Sydney, Australia. It has offices in New York (United States of America), Mexico City (Mexico) and Brussels (Belgium).