“Many of the world’s poorest people are living in these fragile states. It will be impossible to eradicate poverty if we don’t address the complexities in these countries. Take Somalia: it’s a classic example of how a country was allowed to fail and no one did anything about it.”
Samy is an Associate Professor in the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) and the co-author of the annual Fragile States report as part of the Country Indicators for Foreign Policy (CIFP) project with NPSIA Professor David Carment and NPSIA Fellow Simon Langlois-Bertrand.
The Objective: To use several indicators to identify the most fragile or failing countries around the world and pinpoint the areas where intervention is most needed.
The Methodology: NPSIA researchers scan and capture global data on all of the world’s countries. They consider three main components: authority, legitimacy, capacity. For instance, countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan are considered fragile mostly due to weak authority structures. In the case of several Middle Eastern countries, the fragility largely comes from a lack of legitimacy. And with African nations, it is often a lack of capacity or resources.
The project also considers six clusters of performance within profile countries: governance, economics, security and crime, human development, demography, and environment, with a cross-cutting theme of gender.The Findings: The 2014 Country Indicators for Foreign Policy project provided a global fragility ranking for 197 countries based on 2013 data.
According to the report, the top five “are countries that we would typically characterize as being trapped in fragility, not only because of their poor rankings but also due to their persistently high fragility scores over an extended period of time.”
The project is unique in that it has historical data on fragility extending back to the 1980s. In considering the data, researchers found that it takes years for a country to transition from instability to resilience. And while a country like Somalia seems “trapped” in fragility, others—such as Mozambique and Bangladesh—are becoming more resilient over time.
Friday, September 9, 2016 in Field Notes, FPA Voices
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