In 2005, GEO magazine and GRIP joined forces in an exciting new venture – measuring each country’s contribution to world peace.

From the start, we decided to move beyond aspects directly connected with diplomacy and security as they are viewed by governments today. In our view, contributing to peace is also about respect for human rights and concern for our shared environment by implementing a sustainable development strategy that will help prevent conflict in the future

To quantify these complex and ever evolving notions, we selected twenty wide-ranging indicators like participation in peace-keeping operations, respect for freedom of the press and a country’s ecological footprint. Together, these parameters form the GEO/GRIP world peace-building index (ICPM) that enabled us to draw up a scorecard in 2005 of the top 152 peace-builders. Countries are classified on a sliding scale from the theoretical maximum of 5 to the minimum of 0. Only 11 countries had a score of more than half (2.5) with 70 countries not even reaching the 1.5 mark.

In the light of the success of the initial exercise, GRIP hopes to continue and fine-tune the index with the aid of new partners.