BY PATRICIA TAFT AND WENDY WILSON In April 2019, a photograph of a woman dressed in white, standing atop a car and rallying a large group of protestors went viral. The woman, a student named Alaa Salah, had had enough. And by the size and passion of those chanting with her, so had many others. […]
Author Archives: fundforpeace
Fifteen Years On, Cote d’Ivoire Comes Back from the Brink
- 10 May 2020
BY MARCEL MAGLO AND FIONA GRATHWOHL In the very first Failed States Index (FSI) in 2005, Côte d’Ivoire was ranked as the world’s most fragile state. Sixteen years later, the country once ravaged by two civil conflicts bears little resemblance to its past when it was torn along political and ethnic lines as Laurent Gbagbo […]
Iraq’s Improving Trajectory
- 10 May 2020
BY NATE HAKEN AND SARAH COCKEY Access to safe water has always been a fundamental driver of conflict around the world. The worst drought in hundreds of years preceded the Syria crisis in 2011 and fueled unrest in Yemen. Changing rain patterns and desertification have brought farmers and herders into lethal violence, killing over ten […]
An Integrated Conflict Early Warning/Early Response System
- 12 February 2020
Over the last eight years PIND Foundation has built a robust Conflict Early Warning and Early Response (EWER) system in Nigeria’s nine Niger Delta states. What makes this EWER system truly unique is not only that it systematically links raw empirical data with qualitative analysis and response planning, but it does so in synergy with […]
Ten Countries to Watch for in Fragile States Index 2020
- 23 December 2019
BY J.J. MESSNER AND CHARLES FIERTZ After 15 years of producing the Fragile States Index (FSI), we are frequently asked about how predictive of a tool it really is. So, to what extent can the FSI signal emerging crisis, as opposed to merely diagnosing current conditions? Though prediction is inevitably bound by probability and uncertainty, […]