DESPITE a higher spending to contain violence, the Philippines lags behind its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region in achieving the elusive goal of peace, a think tank’s index revealed.
The Sydney, Australia-headquartered Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) ranked the Philippines just above a notch from North Korea in IEP’s Global Peace Index (GPI) at 18 among 19 countries in the region.
The Philippines’s overall score in the tenth GPI slid by 0.010 (North Korea to 0.011) in the regional ranking, headed by New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia at the top 6. Globally, the Philippines was ranked 139 in the GPI—North Korea’s at 150.
Its neighbors ranked fairly well among the “peaceful” countries with Indonesia at 42, Vietnam at 59 and Thailand at 125. Globally, the Philippines is below Burundi (138).
Citing 2014 data, the Philippines spent $60.979 billion to contain violence. The IEP said per-capita violence containment cost of the Philippines based on 2014 PPP was at $615. The country’s total cost of violence containment was pegged by IEP at 8 percent of GDP.
In contrast, Thailand, which was rocked by a series of riots and a takeover of a military junta spent only 7 percent of GDP to contain violence. However, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations member-country’s total cost of violence containment based on 2014 PPP was higher by roughly $9 million at $69.940 billion, IEP’s data revealed. Thailand’s per capita violence containment cost at 2014 PPP was also higher than the Philippines’s at $1,033.
But IEP noted while the region’s level of peace “has remained largely unchanged” since last year, a number of countries including Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Myanmar and Thailand improved their scores. “Heightened tensions in the South China Sea impacted external relations between the three main nations concerned: China, Vietnam and the Philippines.”
To note, China’s per-capita violence containment cost based on 2014 PPP was at $700.632 billion, which is 4 percent of its GDP. Vietnam’s, on the other hand, was nearly less than half of the Philippines’s at $38.425 billion, or just 7 percent of its GDP.
Per capita violence containment costs of China and Vietnam were also lower than the Philippines’s at $514 and $424, respectively.
Overall, IEP’s study finds that while 81 countries improved, “the deterioration in another 79 outweighed these gains, meaning that peace declined at a faster rate than in the previous year.”
“The world became less peaceful in 2016, reinforcing an underlying decadelong deterioration in world peacefulness driven primarily by increased terrorism and higher levels of political instability,” IEP said in a statement.
According to the IEP, the economic impact of violence on the global economy totalled $13.6 trillion, or 13.3 percent, of gross world product, equivalent to 11 times the size of global foreign direct investment.
“The economic impact of violence was $137 trillion over the last decade—greater than global GDP in 2015,” it said.
Iceland is the world’s most peaceful country, followed by Denmark and Austria. This means the Philippines is hundreds less peaceful compared to these countries. The country, however, is considered more peaceful than Mexico (GPI of 140), India (141) and Egypt (142).
Syria (GPI of 163, the bottom rung) is least peaceful, followed by South Sudan (162), Iraq (161), Afghanistan (160) and Somalia (159, or just 20 rungs below the Philippines).