Violence costs Namibia billions a year

VIOLENCE has affected Namibia's economy by US$3,47 billion over the last year, according to statistics released by the Global Peace Index (GPI).

The US$3,47 billion is 15% of Namibia's GDP, or US$1 443 per person a year.

The Namibian reported that at yesterday's rate the impact would be as high as N$51,7 billion due to the weakened rand against the US dollar. "In 2015, violence containment expenditure in Namibia totaled US$3,5 billion, an increase of 79% from 2008.

At 15% of GDP, this was ranked 27th in the world. Addressing the global disparity in peace and achieving an overall 10% decrease in the economic impact of violence would produce a peace dividend of US$1,36 trillion. This is approximately equivalent to the size of world food exports," said Steve Killelea, founder and executive chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

Of 163 countries listed on the Global Peace Index, Namibia is ranked 55th, and 8th out of Africa's 44 sub−Saharan countries.

According to the index, the world became less peaceful in 2016, reinforcing an underlying decade−long deterioration in world peacefulness driven primarily by increased terrorism and higher levels of political instability.

Refugees and displaced persons have also risen dramatically over the last decade, doubling to approximately 60 million people between 2007 and 2016, nearly 1% of the world's population.

There are now nine countries with more than 10% of their population displaced in some form; 20% of Somalia and South Sudan's population respectively, and over 60% of Syria's.

The tenth edition of the GPI highlights a stark and growing inequality in global levels of peacefulness as the gap between the most and least peaceful countries continues to widen.

The study, by international think tank the IEP finds that while 81 countries improved, the deterioration in another 79 outweighed these gains, meaning that peace declined at a faster rate than in the previous year. Despite this, some of the most peaceful countries are now recording historically high levels of peace.

In the last decade, Namibia has improved in peace by 5% largely due to improvements in the indicators measuring UN peacekeeping funding, incarceration rates and internal conflicts fought.

While the global economic impact of violence dropped by 2% when compared to last year's report, it was still staggering in 2015, equal to 11 times the size of global foreign direct investment.

This represents 13,3% of world GDP, or N$27 933 per person – globally. In the last ten years, the economic impact of violence was US$137 trillion; greater than global GDP in 2015.