Global Militarisation Levels Improve: 2019 Global Peace Index

Chart of the week: Global militarisation levels improving

A key finding from the 2019 Global Peace Index (GPI) shows that the Militarisation domain had the largest improvement of the three GPI domains.

The Militarisation domain includes seven indicators that reflect the link between a country’s level of military build-up, access to weapons and its level of peacefulness, both domestically and internationally.

In 2019, indicators such as UN peacekeeping funding, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, and weapons exports showed the most notable improvements.

72 countries reduced their level of military expenditure

On a global scale, 72 countries reduced their level of military expenditure as a percentage of GDP in the 2019 GPI report, with the majority of the largest falls occurring in countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and the Middle East and North Africa.

The Republic of the Congo recorded the largest fall in military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, declining by 3.4 percentage points.

It was followed by Iraq, which declined by 2.5 percentage points, and Oman, which fell by 1.1 percentage points. Only Trinidad and Tobago had an increase in military expenditure as a percentage of GDP of more than one percentage point.

Read more in the 2019 Global Peace Index here.