There are at least 26 countries around the world that have chosen to exist without an army. Christophe Barbey from the APRED Participative Institute for the Progress of Peace, offers a thorough mapping of these countries in the new working paper "Non-militarisation: Countries without Armies. Identification Criteria and First Findings". Starting from the legal and factual criteria for a nonmilitarised country status, the paper offers a first insight into motives and reasoning for being army-less. Many of the states are very small, often island-states, yet seemingly well off and safe, the author concludes, while opening up this field for more research.