According to the 2023 Global Peace Index, Vietnam is ranked 41st among 163 countries and territories studied. This is an improvement of four places compared to the previous year.
The study measures a nation’s state of peace across three domains: societal safety and security, the extent of ongoing domestic and international conflict, and the degree of militarisation.
Vietnam scored 1.745 (the lower the better), which is considered a “high” level of peace. It joins the ranks of Germany, Netherlands, Malaysia, United Kingdom, Laos, Indonesia, South Korea, Argentina, Chile, Cyprus and others.
In the Asia-Pacific region with 19 countries and territories measured in the index, Vietnam is the 7th most peaceful place. It ranks higher than South Korea (8th) and Cambodia (13th), China (14th), or North Korea (19th).
In the GPI ongoing domestic and international conflict domain specifically, Vietnam’s peacefulness is squarely among the top one third of countries measured with 1.403 in score.
Iceland, Mauritius, Singapore, and Uruguay are the only four countries with perfect score of 1.0.
Vietnam is also placed in the top third in the societal safety and security as well as the militarisation domains.
The study also estimates that Vietnam suffers about 6% in percentage of GDP/or US$1,200 per capita as the economic costs of violence. This makes Vietnam the 99th in terms of being most affected by violence.
Ukraine, Afghanistan, Sudan and North Korea top the list of suffering the most from economic costs of violence with losses as percentage as their GDP estimated at 63%, 47%, 30%, and 39% respectively.
The economic impact of violence on the global economy in 2022 was $17.5 trillion in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. This figure is equivalent to 12.9% of the world’s GDP or $2,200 per person.