The East hopes for peace, the global West is waiting for conflicts

One in four people worldwide (26%) expects a more peaceful 2024, and two out of five respondents (39%) expect the opposite – a more turbulent year. Almost everyone else (29%) expects the same as before. Thus, fears definitely prevail, unlike the period two years ago, when the global peace index revealed almost equal proportions of optimists and pessimists.

The greatest anxiety about possible conflicts is expressed primarily by residents of the European Union (56%), the United States (59%) and Canada (53%). The opposite sentiment is more pronounced in the countries of the global South and East, for example, in Afghanistan and Indonesia, where the share of positive expectations for a more peaceful 2024 reaches 68%. The level of optimism about a more peaceful year is higher among Muslims (38%).

In Russia, one in eight respondents (12%) expects a more peaceful year, slightly more than a third of respondents (35%) imagine 2024 to be more conflict–prone, and 29% - the same as the previous one.

These are the general results of the global survey* "End of the Year" (End of the Year) of the international association of research agencies Gallup International conducted at the end of 2023 in 40 countries of the world, in Russia the study was conducted by ROMIR.

Do you think 2024 will be more peaceful, more conflict-ridden, or the same as 2023? TOP 5 countries of optimists and pessimists on the issue of peace. Source: Gallup International, 2023. 

Andrey Milekhin, President of ROMIR, Doctor of Sociology, comments: "The global mood regarding peace and possible armed conflicts, as well as in matters of global optimism/pessimism and economic hopes, again demonstrate a shift of hopes to the East and a concentration of anxiety in the West. At the same time, Russia is far from panicking. There are fewer optimists among Russians than the global average, but the proportion of pessimists is also lower. In general, representatives of Orthodoxy and Islam showed a high degree of optimism on the issue of peaceful expectations for 2024, which is probably due to adherence to traditional values."

*In October-December 2023, more than 40,000 people in 40 countries were interviewed as part of the End of the Year project. In each country, surveys were conducted based on national or urban samples. It is not possible to verify the quality of primary information collection for a number of countries. In Russia, the ROMIR research company surveyed 1,500 respondents based on a nationally representative sample.