WASHINGTON: World peace has deteriorated steadily over the last seven years, with wars, militant attacks and crime reversing six decades of gradual improvement, a global security report said on Wednesday.

Conflict in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan and Central African Republic in particular helped drag down the annual Global Peace Index, according to research by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

In particular, rising numbers of people were killed in militant attacks across the Middle East, South Asia and Africa while murder rates rose in the emerging world’s growing urban centres. More people also became refugees by fleeing fighting.

Crime and conflict rates in more developed regions, particularly Europe, generally fell, said the report.

The deterioration appeared to be the most significant fall in 60 years, the IEP said. Estimates of what the index would have been prior to its launch in 2007 showed world peace improving more or less continuously since the end of World War Two.

“There seem to be a range of causes,” Steve Killelea, founder and executive chairman of the IEP, said. “You have the repercussions of the Arab Spring, the rise of terrorism particularly following the invasion of Iraq and the repercussions of the global financial crisis.”

The study examines 22 indicators across 162 countries, including military spending, homicide rates and deaths from conflict, civil disobedience and terrorism. —Reuters

Published in Dawn, June 19th, 2014