Peace index

The Global Peace Index (GPI) 2025, released last week, ranked Pakistan 144th out of 163 nations. This places the country lower in terms of peacefulness than all other nations in South Asia, apart from Afghanistan. India was ranked 115th globally and fourth in South Asia, ahead of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, respectively. The previous edition of the GPI ranked Pakistan at 140, indicating a decline in peacefulness relative to other countries. The index tracks peacefulness using 23 indicators grouped under three domains: ongoing conflict, societal safety and security and militarisation, and assigns each country a score, with higher scores indicating less peacefulness. Pakistan’s score of 2.797 is 0.092 points higher than its score last year, indicating a decline in peace in absolute terms too. This is also the second-largest decline in peacefulness in South Asia, with only Bangladesh’s score declining by more, even though it was ranked higher than Pakistan. It is important to note here that this edition of the GPI mainly covers the year 2024, which means that last month’s clashes with India did not affect Pakistan’s score. However, the report highlighted Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) as a critical conflict escalation spot and noted Pakistan’s ‘heightened civil unrest and escalating internal and cross-border tensions’.

Events this year give a lot of credibility to the GPI’s prognosis on IIOJK, with a terror attack in the Pahalgam area of the region serving as the spark for May’s clashes with India. The report also notes how India revoked the region’s semi-autonomous status under Article 370 and split the former state into two federally governed territories, using mass arrests, communication blackouts and a sizeable troop surge to enforce its will, and how India has marginalised much of its Muslim-majority populace. The Indian state’s use of its Kashmir policy to appeal to nationalist sentiment and bolster domestic legitimacy was also identified as part of the conflict escalation factors in the region. In a way, it is strange that many global rankings often do not make a distinction between those creating the conditions for instability and declines in peace and those suffering from them. Pakistan is not illegally occupying areas of Kashmir, it did not revoke the region’s autonomy and alienate, oppress and brutalise its people and it did not launch false accusations related to the Pahalgam attack to start a mini-war.

The fact that the country’s ranking is lower than India’s seems to indicate that Pakistan is less peaceful than India and that might be true based on internal measures of the two countries. However, it is also clear whose actions are more responsible for driving a deterioration in peace in the region. This decline is not limited to South Asia, with the GPI reporting a global decline in peace for the thirteenth time in the last 17 years, with peacefulness deteriorating in 87 countries and improving in 74. Predictably, the more ‘peaceful’ countries tend to be the wealthier and advanced nations but, in many cases, it is precisely these countries that shoulder most of the blame for the wars and instability in the world. These are the countries where the war money and the weapons flow from and where reckless interventions are planned and illegal, even genocidal, occupations planned. A more peaceful world should start with a ranking that identifies the pushers of ‘peacelessness’.