Taiwan slips to 42nd in Global Peace Index

Taipei, June 11 (CNA) Taiwan has been ranked 42nd in terms of peacefulness, among 163 countries, down five places from last year, according to the recently released 2026 Global Peace Index.

With an overall score of 1.751, Taiwan dropped from 37th last year, the report published by the global Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) showed.

The overall score measures a country's level of peacefulness, using 23 quantitative and qualitative indicators across three domains -- ongoing domestic and international conflict, societal safety and security, and militarization. Each indicator is weighted on a scale of 1 to 5, with lower scores indicating greater peacefulness.

While Taiwan ranked 42nd worldwide, it was listed in 9th place among the 19 Asian-Pacific countries in the report, after New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, Timor-Leste, Mongolia, and Vietnam.

In a section that examined the use of AI for and against peace, the report cited Taiwan's vTaiwan initiative, which uses an open-source deliberation platform at the national level, as one of the few examples of "structured public deliberation producing direct policy change at scale."

Across the world, peace is at its lowest level since the inception of the index in 2007, with 99 countries witnessing a deterioration in peacefulness and only 62 seeing an improvement, the report said.

Global military expenditure reached a record US$2.9 trillion in 2025, while deaths from global conflict remained at historic highs, with over 181,000 killed in 2025, which was a six-fold increase since 2008, according to the report.

Peacefulness deteriorated most sharply on the ongoing conflict domain but improved slightly on the safety and security and militarization domains, it said. Militarization improved mainly because of stronger commitments to U.N. peacekeeping operations, the report said.

Iceland remained the most peaceful country in the world for the 19th consecutive year, with an overall score of 1.161, followed by New Zealand, Switzerland, Slovenia and Ireland, according to the report.

Rounding out the top 10 were Austria, Portugal, Singapore, Finland and Japan, it showed.

At the bottom of the list was Russia, with a score of 3.367, the report said.

The Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank dedicated to shifting the world's focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress, according to the report.