BY NATE HAKEN, DANIEL WOODBURN, EMILY SAMPLE, WENDY WILSON, JOHN MADDEN, PAUL TURNER, MIA BAXLEY, BILLY AGWANDA, MELINDA ELLINGTON, AYÇA KIRIŞ, CANDICE GARCIA, ISIDORE NSENGIYUMVA, EDIYE BASSEY, ALEXANDER BERGH, NIALL MOHAN The Fragile States Index, produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states […]
Category Archives: Analysis – 2023
Cascading Fragility: From Ukraine to the World
- Tuesday, 13 June 2023 15:11
BY DANIEL WOODBURN & EMILY SAMPLE Photo by Alice Kotlyarenko on Unsplash In the wake the Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s 2023 Fragile States Index (FSI) score has risen from 68.6 to 95.9, skyrocketing the country’s ranking from the 92nd most fragile to 18th, claiming the unenviable title of “Most Worsened” for the year. […]
Planning for the Unpredictable
- Friday, 09 June 2023 16:45
BY DANIEL WOODBURN Photo by Donnie on Unsplash As Yogi Berra wisely said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”[1] Through an international relations lens, it certainly is tough because 1) we do not know when a crisis might strike, and 2) it is surprisingly difficult to know how a country will perform […]
L’Etat, C’est (Pas) Moi: France’s Mystifying Improvement on the Fragile States Index
- Thursday, 08 June 2023 13:48
BY DANIEL WOODBURN Photo by Antoine Schibler on Unsplash On its surface France may appear to be a country in turmoil, even decline, rocked by regular protests and an increasingly polarized political landscape.[1] Popular discourse of increasing state authoritarianism and declining public services would seemingly place it in the company of the United States under […]
State Fragility and the Shadow of Genocide in Nagorno Karabakh and Armenia (the South Caucasus)
- Wednesday, 07 June 2023 18:48
BY ALEXIS POSTON Photo by Adam Jones In the early hours of 13 September 2022, Azeri Armed Forces launched a shelling attack against Armenian cities and towns along the Armenian-Azerbaijani borders, largely impacting the towns of Vardenis, Jermuk, Sisian, Goris, and Kapan.[1] Reports following the attacks revealed that Azeri forces were not just targeting Armenian […]
Whiplash in Türkiye: Promise and Fragility
- Wednesday, 07 June 2023 16:24
By Ayça Kiriş Photo by Samuele Schirò on Pixabay After 100 years of independence, the Republic of Türkiye is veering toward greater fragility. When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power over 20 years ago, Türkiye was emerging as a bulwark of stability in the region. It was consolidating liberal and democratic values, improving […]
Guyana – A Wellspring of Potential
- Tuesday, 06 June 2023 19:34
BY MELINDA ELLINGTON Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash Despite a history of turbulent politics, ethnic divisions, and fractious relationships with neighbors, Guyana has the potential to become one of the biggest success stories of the decade. The discovery of oil fields has flooded the nation with resources that could improve public services, civic participation, and economic […]
Fragility Revisited
- Tuesday, 06 June 2023 19:24
BY PAULINE H. BAKER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, FFP An editorial cartoon in the May 27, 2023, edition of The Economist depicted a race about to start with four entrants, each represented by a pretzel-like twisted figure in a state of panic. Onlookers explained it was “a race to determine who’s the most dysfunctional…and all of the […]
Peru – Decades of Progress in Jeopardy
- Monday, 05 June 2023 21:15
BY MELINDA ELLINGTON Peru steadily improved on the Fragile States Index from 2006, with a sharp reduction in poverty,[1] and improvements in literacy,[2] infant mortality,[3] and life expectancy.[4] But against a backdrop of high inequality, since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 the country has veered sharply toward greater fragility, and in 2022 was among the […]
Incentivizing Peace only Leads to More War in Sudan
- Thursday, 01 June 2023 20:51
By Reem Abbas and Emily Sample Consistently in the top ten most fragile countries, the hope brought by the 2019 coup has since been dampened by the continued cycle of unstable governance. This has escalated even further in 2023 as the tentative alliance between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary […]