In June 2026, the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) published the 2026 Global Peace Index (GPI). The report detailed highly concerning findings about the state of peace in 163 countries across the globe, and found that global peace is at its lowest level since the index’s inception in 2007.
IEP’s chief research officer Thomas Morgan spoke with Peace News Network (PNN) about the conditions across the globe behind some of these findings. He explained that the measure of global peace being at its lowest level is according to two separate measures: the index itself (how peaceful conditions are in each country), and the number of active conflicts. Regarding the index itself, he elaborated that conditions in 99 of the 163 countries had deteriorated, while conditions in 62 countries had improved.
At the same time, the number of active conflicts is at its highest since the end of the Second World War, and Morgan noted that recently released data for 2025 shows 63 active state-based conflicts.
The number of countries engaged in external conflicts has doubled from 59 in 2003 to 103 in 2026. The main driver behind this, Morgan said, is third-party participation in other countries’ civil wars.
“In most cases the involvement takes the form of support to an existing government fighting an internal rebel or terrorist group, so a single civil war can pull in several outside states. Niger, the United States, Iran, Tanzania, Cameroon, and Rwanda were among the countries most heavily involved,” he said.
Morgan added that today, more states have the means and the motive to act militarily beyond their borders, and fewer are constrained by a single dominant ally. Despite this, Morgan said most of the involvement by external countries is quite small, rather than full scale interventions in other countries, and this data does include countries that are involved in peacekeeping operations.
Still, the uptick in conflict is causing harrowing numbers of deaths. The report found that the number of conflict deaths reached just over 181,000 in 2025, roughly six times the 2008 figure, and 20 countries each recorded more than 1,000 conflict deaths, the highest count in the history of the Index.
At the same time, Morgan cautions that, “The mechanisms for ending wars are weaker than they were; The share of state-based conflicts ending in a peace agreement fell from 23 percent in the 1970s to about 4 percent in the 2010s, and the share ending in outright victory fell from 49 to nine percent.”
Morgan noted that world military expenditure has risen for 10 consecutive years to US$2.9 trillion, and 117 million people are displaced.
Several countries are feeling the economic impact of armed conflict. The Index found that the global economic impact of violence was $21.8 trillion in constant purchasing power parity (PPP) terms in 2025, equivalent to 10.5 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), or $2,657 per person. This is a 3.2 percent increase on the previous year, mostly due to higher military spending. Military expenditure rose 5.8 percent in 2025, the largest single-year increase since the Index began.
For countries in active conflict, Morgan said, the cost is different in kind: Since 2008, the cost of conflict deaths has risen by 459 percent, and the costs of conflict deaths, GDP losses, and displacement have each more than tripled. Between 2024 and 2025 the economic impact of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) rose in 100 countries by an average of 23 percent.
Morgan said, “Against all this, spending on peacebuilding and peacekeeping was US$49.2 billion in 2025, about 0.5 percent of military spending in PPP terms.”
Another factor contributing to conflict is the lack of oversight with artificial intelligence (AI). Morgan stressed that the report’s concern is with speed and oversight rather than with AI itself. He noted that recorded drone strike events rose roughly 115-fold between 2018 and 2025, and 565 different armed groups carried out at least one drone attack in that period. Of 193 UN member states, 118 are not participating in any of the seven leading AI governance initiatives, he said.
However, Morgan also stressed that the report is careful to say AI cuts both ways.
“AI for Peace applications include mediation, translation, conflict analysis, satellite monitoring, atrocity documentation, demining and reconstruction, and Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab used satellite imagery to track 19,500 Ukrainian children deported to 210 facilities in Russia and Belarus,” Morgan said. The problem, he added, is that the military side is funded and fielded and the peace side is fragmented and underfunded.
The top 10 most peaceful countries on the index are Iceland, New Zealand, Switzerland, Slovenia, Ireland, Austria, Portugal, Singapore, Finland, and Japan; the bottom 10 are Russia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ukraine, Israel, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Mali. Seven of the 10 most peaceful countries are in Western and Central Europe.
On what makes a country more or less peaceful, Morgan said IEP’s broader work on Positive Peace points to well-functioning government, low corruption, a sound business environment, acceptance of the rights of others, and good relations with neighbours as the attitudes and institutions associated with sustained peace.
Comparing indicator averages across the two groups, the largest gaps are on political instability (1.15 against 4.50 on the one-to-five band), the Political Terror Scale (1.20 against 4.45), access to small arms (1.40 against 4.60), relations with neighbours (1.50 against 4.50) and intensity of internal conflict (1.60 against 4.60). The least peaceful countries are, almost by definition, in or adjacent to active conflict, but the pattern in the data is that domestic political instability, state violence against citizens, and easy access to weapons travel together with it, Morgan said.
Some indicators show little separation, he added. Incarceration rates are identical across the two groups, and weapons imports are roughly equal, so militarization on its own is a poor predictor.
Morgan cautioned that “peace inequality is widening.” The 25 most peaceful countries, he said, deteriorated by 0.3 percent since 2008 while the 25 least peaceful deteriorated by 18.9 percent. The global average understates what is happening at the bottom.”
Despite the report’s many concerning findings, Morgan emphasized that the results are not uniformly negative. “Deaths from terrorism fell to their lowest level since 2008, the UN peacekeeping funding indicator recorded the largest improvement of any indicator, and the homicide rate and perceptions of criminality have improved over the long run,” he said.
Keywords: Global Peace Index, Institute for Economics and Peace, conflict, conflict resolution, AI, terror
Tara Abhasakun is Peace News Network (PNN)'s managing editor. She is journalist based in Christchurch, New Zealand, and formerly in Bangkok, Thailand. She has reported on a range of human rights issues involving youth protests in Thailand, as well as arts and culture. Tara's work has appeared in several outlets, including Al Jazeera and South China Morning Post.
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