Failed States Index

Foreign Policy Magazine and the Fund for Peace have just published an index of Failed States. The index is based on 12 indicators - demographic pressures, refugees and displaced persons, group grievance, human flight, uneven development, economic decline, delegitimization of state, public services, human rights, security apparatus, factionalized elites and external intervention. These states, which are in danger of collapsing, are a direct threat to their own and the world's health and safety. About 2 billion people (one-third of the world's population) live in the 60 countries listed in the index.

To no one's surprise, the nations that make the top 10 are largely from Africa. But there are some surprising names on this list of 60 countries: Bhutan, Guatemela, Paraguay, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain and Russia.

Some of these countries have been on the verge of collapse or have actually collapsed before and come out of it. However, the World Bank found that half of the countries that had come back from a collapse were down again within five years.

Of the 12 indicators used, two are most common: uneven development and delegitimization of the state. By uneven development they are referring to economic inequality even in countries, like Venezuela, which you would not normally classify as an impoverished nation. Delegitimization refers to situations where the state is corrupt or simply incapable of providing basic services.

And, of course, we have limited attention spans and tend to be insular. So that, we seldom hear of the nations such as Ivory Coast, Somalia and Congo where the risk of failure is highest.