Physical Violence Index 2021

Report year 2021·Data year 2021

Freedom from political killings and torture (0–1)·Higher is better — rank 1 leads·Published by V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg

36 reference years (1990–2025), covering 176 to 179 countries, with V-Dem’s two component scores stored beside the index on their original 0–4 scale. ⚠ THE NAME READS BACKWARDS: V-Dem’s “physical violence index” scores FREEDOM FROM political killings and torture by the state, so a HIGHER figure is better — 1 is a country where neither is practised, and North Korea and Nicaragua sit at the bottom on 0.05. It is an expert-coded measurement model, not a body count: it asks country experts how routinely a state kills or tortures, then fits a model to their answers, which is why it can move in a year when no one is counting deaths. ⚠ IT IS ABOUT STATE VIOLENCE AGAINST PEOPLE, not war between states and not crime — a country at peace with its neighbours and safe on the street can still score low. ⚠ V-Dem publishes no rank in any of its 1,908 columns, so none is stored; the POSITION on the statistics page is derived here by ordering the index, and labelled as ours. ⚠ One release restates the whole series, so these are reference years from v16, not 36 separate reports.

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