First Northern Ireland peace index highlights falling level of violence since 2019
A new peace index has found that Northern Ireland has made “significant progress” in reducing violence since 2019, but said the foundations needed to sustain long-term peace are improving “much more slowly”.
Researchers from Queen’s University Belfast, in partnership with the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), have produced the first Northern Ireland Peace Index (NIPI).
The index provides a composite measure of “negative peace” and “positive peace” in the 11 local government districts (LGD), covering the period from 2019 to 2025.
Researchers said negative peace measures the absence of violence and fear of violence, while positive peace captures the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.
The report highlighted that Northern Ireland recorded its lowest levels of violence and fear of violence since 2019.
The largest improvement was recorded in homicide, which fell by 47.9%, while paramilitary activity declined by 44.7%.
Hate crime was the only negative peace indicator to deteriorate, increasing by 21.5% over this period.
The research was led by Dr Andrew Thomson and Professor Dominic Bryan, co-investigator, from the Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen’s with the IEP and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
The study found that negative peace improved by 10.7% between 2019 and 2025, with the steepest gains happening over the past two years. Positive peace improved by 0.9% over the same period.
Among individual indicators of positive peace, confidence in the justice system fell by 24%, planning decision efficiency by 41%, and research and development (R&D) spending by 34%.
Dr Thomson said: “The findings in this report give us both reasons for optimism and reasons to carefully assess what might come next.
“Northern Ireland is much less violent than before, but the foundations for peace have not consolidated at the same rate.
“The challenge now is to continue to strengthen the conditions that sustain peace; building trust in institutions, investing in communities and the economy, and addressing the structural inequalities and weaknesses that can leave peace vulnerable.”
The research team highlighted a number of areas which need to improve in order to sustain long-term peace including private-sector investment for innovation and to create high-value jobs, accelerated house-building, and improve trust between government and citizens.
Professor Bryan from Queen’s added: “As the Institute for Economics and Peace has shown in developing peace indexes around the world, policies of positive peace are something that all societies need to work on.
“This report aims to understand peace in a much more ambitious way.
“The idea of a ‘positive peace’ challenges us to look at the conditions in which people thrive.
“It allows us to identify strengths and weaknesses in a process that has been under way for over three decades and to make some comparisons with other parts of the world.
“I hope the report provides a model that can be used by organisations working on peace to strategically develop their work as well as open up debates over peace building and ‘good relations’ policies at regional and LGD levels.”