Economics
Middle East Violence Mars Improving World Peace Outlook
- Syria and region the nexus for terrorism, war and refugees
- Iceland stays most peaceful place on earth; U.S. ranks at 103
Syrians gather at the site of a double car bomb attack in the Al-Zahraa neighbourhood of the central Syrian city of Homs on February 21, 2016.
Photographer: Stringer/AFP via Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Violence in the Middle East increased last year, while the rest of the world largely got safer, underscoring a “global inequality in peace,” according to an annual study.
The economic cost of violence in 2015 was $13.6 trillion, or 13.3 percent of world gross domestic product, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index. That’s 11 times the size of global foreign investment.