The 2026 Positive Peace Index report shows that Afghanistan is the only country in South Asia to have regressed in the index over the past decade. According to the report, Afghanistan’s situation worsened by 3.3% over this period, placing the country 157th out of 163 countries worldwide.<\/p>\n
The Institute for Economics and Peace has classified Afghanistan, with a score of 4.19, among countries with a “very low” level of positive peace. The report says declines in political openness and the free flow of information were among the main reasons for this setback.<\/p>\n
Based on the report’s findings, press freedom in Afghanistan has deteriorated by 78.8% over the past decade; a figure described as the largest decline in any indicator among South Asian countries. Information quality has also fallen by 23.4%, and laws supporting equal treatment across different segments of society have declined by 25%.<\/p>\n
The report also says Afghanistan has recorded a 13.2% decline in government effectiveness. At the same time, the index measuring the exclusion of socio-economic groups in Afghanistan has fallen by 20.4% \u2014 an indicator that assesses the deprivation of individuals and groups from basic rights, economic opportunities and social participation on the basis of financial status, income, social class or occupation.<\/p>\n
At the regional level, South Asian countries as a whole recorded a 2.9% improvement in the Positive Peace Index. Of the seven countries in the region, Sri Lanka posted the biggest gains at 6.3%, followed by India at 6%, with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Pakistan coming after them.<\/p>\n
In the global rankings, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands and Iceland are at the top of the index. After Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Somalia are recorded at the lowest levels.<\/p>\n
The Institute for Economics and Peace defines positive peace as the attitudes, institutions and structures that help create and sustain peaceful societies. The index examines eight key areas, including effective governance, the free flow of information, acceptance of the rights of others, human capital and low levels of corruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Afghanistan is the only South Asian country to regress in the 2026 Positive Peace Index, with major declines in press freedom and government effectiveness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}