The Vision of Humanity website publishes a wonderful, interactive map ranking countries based on peace. If you place the cursor over the country it gives you their rank. The U.S. is 85th out of 149. They have maps for 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
The peace index is based on quite the number of factors, some subjective, including, “Perceived criminality in society”, “Respect for human rights”, “Weapons exports” and “Number of conflicts fought”. All these factors were weighed and tabulated based on the input of an international team. It’s assembled by the Institute for Economics and Peace who have a number of downloadable peace education teaching materials designed for 14-16 year olds on their website.
They have an excellent video (see below) explaining what the peace index is all about and the effect that peaceful societies have on economic growth.
The maps and video would be excellent additions to our discussions of war and peace. I especially like that they try to directly link peace with economic growth, which offers something almost tangible whose importance and implications students can fairly easily understand. I really like these resources.