Life in Denmark is lovely. The country alone has so many wonderful areas ideal for exploring and for settling in with the whole family. The friendly people also make tourists feel comfortable in the places they visit and the immigrants feel at home in their respective communities.

But there’s still another Denmark fact that you should know and this is about security. The latest Global Peace Index (GPI) has ranked this Nordic nation as the world’s second safest country. Denmark shared the second spot with Norway right after New Zealand.

The GPI is conducted each year by several international financial magazines and covers 144 countries. The index takes into account 23 different factors such as political stability, respect for human rights, military expenditure, levels of democracy and transparency as well as statistics on murder incidents.

Most countries in the Scandinavian region ranked well among the safest nations in the world with Finland as the least safe. They are usually the small, democratic and stable nations including Iceland and Sweden. Iceland was tops in 2008 but it slipped to the fourth place for 2009 after being edged out by New Zealand.

Other European countries on the top 15 rank are Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Belgium. Outside of Europe, Japan ranks 7th, Canada is 8th and Qatar in the Middle East is at 16th place. The United States is in the 83rd place while China ranks 74th.

The officials behind the Global Peace Index pointed out that violence around the world has gone up since last year when the global recession was announced. Several reasons can be attributed to this and these include the high unemployment rate, low home prices and freezing of wages.

The GPI is already in its third edition. It is considered the first ever effort focused on the study of peace worldwide.