Accra, Aug. 23, GNA - Botswana, Malawi and Ghana in that order have been ranked the most peaceful countries in Africa in a study of 153 countries, the 2011 Global Peace Initiative has indicated.

Congo, Sudan and Somalia are the lowest ranked African countries, while Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq are the lowest outside the continent, according to the index mailed to the GNA on Tuesday.

Iceland, New Zealand, Japan, Denmark, Czech Republic, Austria, Finland, Canada, Norway and Slovenia are the top 10 most peaceful countries. Ghana ranked 42 worldwide as the most peaceful country in the world. There are 23 indicators that make up the Global Peace Index. Countries are scored on these indicators on a range from 1-5 where one (1) is considered most peaceful.

The Global Peace Index (GPI) is a project of the Institute of Economics and Peace in the US. It represents a ground-breaking milestone in the study of peace. It is the first time that an Index has been created that ranks the nations of the world by their peacefulness and identifies some of the drivers of peace.

The GPI, for instance, defines conflict as contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties of which at least one is the government of state and results in at least 25 battle deaths in a year.

GPI says this definition also allows for the measuring of peacefulness within, as well as between, nations. The peace indicators include the number of external and internal conflicts fought, estimated number of deaths from organised external and internal conflicts, level of organised conflict, relations with neighbouring countries level of perceived criminality in society and the number of displaced people as a percentage of the total population.

Others are political stability and level of disrespect for human rights. Ghana scored between 1 and 4. Level of violent crimes was 3; likelihood of violent demonstrations 3; and ease of access to small arms and light weapons (4).