BY CHARLES FIERTZ Colombia saw its worst year-on-year change in the history of the Fragile States Index (FSI) in 2020, breaking a trend of almost uninterrupted improvement since the Index’s inauguration. The 2016 peace deal between Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government is looking increasingly fragile, with faith in the process […]
Category Archives: Analysis
What Else Could Go Wrong? Mozambique Continues Worsening Trend
- 10 May 2020
BY CHARLES FIERTZ A combination of natural disasters, insurgent attacks, and a contested election resulted in another challenging year for Mozambique, which tied with Libya for the second-most worsened country on the 2020 Fragile States Index (FSI). Already beset by increasing structural pressures across multiple indicators, Mozambique’s steady worsening over the past several years in […]
Division in India
- 10 May 2020
BY CHARLES FIERTZ In 1989, foreshadowing events to come, India’s current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) issued the Palampur Resolution, throwing their support behind the construction of a temple devoted to the Hindu deity Rama on the site of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. This was a remarkable gamble at the time, as […]
Libya Continues Path as the Decade’s Most Worsened Country
- 10 May 2020
BY PATRICIA TAFT Libya’s long-running conflict and instability has been well documented by the Fragile States Index (FSI), wherein it rates as the most-worsened country in the world for the past decade, and also holds the record for the greatest year-on-year worsening, when it worsened by 25.8 points in the 2012 FSI. In the 2020 […]
Uzbekistan: The Quiet Achiever
- 10 May 2020
KEENAN IULIANO When countries worsen significantly on the Fragile States Index (FSI), the deterioration can sometimes be rapid and dramatic and is nearly always headline news. However, significant improvement tends to be more steady, gradual, long-term, and can often go unnoticed. Uzbekistan is one such country that has made significant but quiet improvement; its overall […]
In the Wake of Al-Bashir, Women of Sudan Bring a Glimmer of Hope
- 10 May 2020
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. […]
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 […]
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, […]
Fragile States Index 2019
- 10 April 2019
BY FUND FOR PEACE The Fragile States Index, produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also in identifying when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink of failure. By highlighting pertinent issues in weak and failing states, The […]