Sydney — A newly released report by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP)—an independent, international think tank headquartered in Sydney, Australia, has ranked Afghanistan 157th out of 163 countries on the Positive Peace Index.
This evaluation highlights severe structural deficiencies and a deepening crisis in governance, civil liberties, and information flow under the current administration. IEP is widely recognized for developing global metrics to analyze peace, quantify its economic value, and study the institutional frameworks required to sustain societal resilience
Scoring 4.19 out of 5, Afghanistan was placed in the “very low” positive peace category alongside conflict-ridden states such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Somalia. While the broader South Asian region demonstrated an average improvement of 2.9 percent in its positive peace metrics over the evaluated decade, Afghanistan stood out as the only country in the region to record an overall structural decline, contrasting sharply with progressive gains registered by neighboring countries including Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
According to the IEP findings, Afghanistan’s regression was primarily driven by a 78.8 percent collapse in press freedom—marking the steepest individual indicator decline recorded across the entire South Asian region—alongside a 23.4 percent degradation in the free and transparent flow of information, a 25 percent deterioration in laws supporting equal treatment and population group rights, a 13.2 percent drop in government effectiveness, and a 20.4 percent worsening in socioeconomic exclusion measures.
Analysts in Islamabad note that the latest report underscores longstanding concerns regarding the governance vacuum in Kabul, emphasizing that sustainable regional security cannot be achieved through rhetoric alone while internal institutional frameworks, human rights protections, and basic freedoms continue to deteriorate and isolate the country further from global norms.