Fragility in the World
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The Fragile States Index is a yearly report issued by The New Humanitarian. The Index tries to evaluate countries’ vulnerability to conflict or collapse. The ranking is based on the total rates for twelve indicators: Security Apparatus, Factionalized Elites, Group Grievance, Economic Decline and Property, Uneven Economic Development, Human Flight and Brain Drain, State Legitimacy, Public Services, Human Rights and Rule of Law, Demographic Pressures, Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, External Intervention. Each indicator is scored on a range of 0 to 10, with 0 being the most stable and 10 being the least durable, creating a range spanning 0−120.
Scores are received through a process of content analysis. In the content analysis, millions of texts from over 100 thousand English-language or translated sources are investigated and filtered using algorithms for Boolean operations.
Fragility States Index (2019)
Notwithstanding the regular incremental progress shown by the bulk of countries on the 2019 Fragile States Index, several states have nonetheless stood out for improvements in fragility and instability. Of the twenty most worsened nations in 2019, 9 of those states were also amongst the twenty most worsened nations in 2018. Three of these states – US, Brazil, and Venezuela – have been amongst the twenty most worsened countries for each of the 3 most recent Fragile States Index’s.
For 146 of the 178 nations analyzed by the Fragile States Index, 2019 is slightly more satisfying than in 2018.
After having ranked as the most-worsened nation in the 2017 Fragile States Index, Ethiopia has done a remarkable turnaround this year, ranking as the most improved nation. Over the long-term, former USSR countries proceed to dominate the list of most-improved nations (Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan).
