India has been ranked 141 on a Global Peace Index — making it less peaceful than countries like Burundi, Serbia and Burkina Faso — with violence taking a USD 680-billion toll on its economy in 2015. In a ranking of 163 countries, compiled by global think tank Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), Syria has been named the least peaceful, followed by South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

On the other hand, Iceland was ranked as the world’s most peaceful country, followed by Denmark and Austria.

India has moved up two position, from 141st last year, but the study said the country’s peace score has “deteriorated” over the past year — which means the slight rise in ranking could be due to worse performance of others. The report said that in the last decade, India’s position deteriorated when it came to peace “by 5 % largely due to deteriorations in the indicators measuring UN peacekeeping funding and the level of political terror”.

Within South Asia, Bhutan was ranked best (13th overall rank), while India was fifth followed by Pakistan at sixth (overall 153rd) and Afghanistan at sixth place (global 160th).

The GPI 2016 ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness. According to the report, world became a less peaceful in 2016, mainly on account of increased terrorism and higher levels of political instability.