Denmark enjoys a very high ranking when it comes to its country’s peacefulness. The top 20 highest rankings are shared with the other Scandinavian countries, parts of middle and Eastern Europe and Japan.

Denmark was only succeeded by Iceland, who after making its first appearance in the Index, tops the rankings. Norway placed third followed by New Zealand and Japan, which was the only member of the G8 in the top ten. In general, small, stable and democratic countries are the most peaceful - 16 of the top 20 are western or central European democracies.

Denmark's commitment in Iraq and the fact that Denmark takes such an active part in UN-peace keeping missions are two of the main reasons as to why Denmark places second in this year's Index.

The Index, now in its second year, ranks 140 countries according to their relative states of peace, based on factors such as military expenditure, respect for human rights and number of homicides per 100,000 people, writes the LA Times.

The Danish Ambassador, Friis Arne Petersen attended the release of the 2008 Index in which a majority of the countries polled performed better against key measures of peacefulness compared with last year. The Index has polled countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe – not only on how peaceful they are domestically - but also on how they interact with the outside world.

The Global Peace Index is a ground-breaking milestone in the study of peace. The index was created in 2007 to rank the nations of the world by their peacefulness and identifies some of the drivers of that peace. In less than a week after the Index was released in 2007 it had been quoted in over half a million articles in the international press and after only one month the number of visitors to the homepage had risen to approximately 11 million.

The Index is constructed from 24 indicators of external and internal measures of peace including UN deployments overseas and levels of violent crime.

"The world appears to be a marginally more peaceful place this year. This is encouraging, but it takes small steps by individual countries for the world to make greater strides on the road to peace," says Steve Killelea, founder of the Global Peace Index.

The United States dropped one slot from 96 to number 97 in this year's Index, where countries such as Angola, 110, Indonesia, 68, and India, 107, have demonstrated the greatest improvements compared to last year's Index. In comparison, Iraq is the lowest ranked country on the Index placing last as number 140.

Since the first Global Peace Index was launched in 2007, it has been used as a tool by Presidents, Prime Ministers and academics. Founder Mr. Killelea believes the Index should also be used by business to make more informed investment decisions and, while he acknowledges the role of business in creating peace, he is calling for business to do more.

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