Vision of Humanity"

According to the 2010 Global Peace Index (GPI) report released on Tuesday in London by the Institute of Economics and Peace, Tunisia is ranked as the second safest country in Africa.

Among Arab nations Tunisia comes 3 rd after Qatar (15) and Oman (23). Iraq ranks last (149).

Tunisia which is credited with a score of 1, 678 points, is ranked 37th in the world out of the 149 surveyed countries. It gained 7 places compared with last year’s report when it was ranked 44th.

The index uses a set of 23 criteria, including foreign wars, internal conflict, respect for human rights, crime rate , arms trade and democracy.

For the second year running, New Zealand is the most peaceful nation on Earth, followed by Iceland (2nd) and Japan (3rd). By comparison, the United Kingdom ranked 31 th and United States appear in 85 th position

The new ranking comes to strengthen Tunisia’s stand as an African model. It also confirms the soundness of the country’s development approach which is based on the strong correlation between the political, social and economic dimensions of development..

According to the report, Tunisia’s score improved, thanks to “an increasingly stable political scene following the comfortable victory for President Ben Ali, and his party, the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD), in the presidential and legislative elections that took place in October 2009″.

This ranking is established on the basis of qualitative and quantitative criteria: institutional environment, macro- economic stability, infrastructure, health, primary education, higher education and training, innovation, efficiency of markets, technological aptitude, market size and business sophistication.

Since 2007, GPI has published its annual reports which are based on the results of studies carried out by experts operating within structures specialized in world security matters, including the Sydney University security studies centre in Australia.

Source: allafrica.com

Date: 9th June 2101