Failed States Index 2010

Foreign Policy magazine and The Fund For Peace collaborate to publish an annual Failed States Index-- drawing on 90,000 publicly available sources to analyze 177 countries and rate them on 12 metrics of state decay. Among the most stable nations were the Scandinavian states, Ireland, and Switzerland. Somalia was considered the most failed state for the third year running, in fact the weakest states were nearly all located in Africa. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Haiti were also all included for their national frailty. All 12 indicators of failure contribute to the final index score, a few key ones:

DEMOGRAPHICS
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): 9.9 of 10
If you live in Congo, there's about a 50-50 chance you are under age 14. Population growth hovers at a fast-paced 3 percent annually, despite civil war, a sky-high infant mortality rate, and pervasive infectious disease.

BRAIN DRAIN
Zimbabwe: 9.7
One out of every five Zimbabweans has fled the country over the past decade-many of them professors, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and journalists.

PUBLIC SERVICES
Niger: 9.7
Niger may well be the poorest country in the world. The government lacks any ability to provide services such as education and health care; rampant illiteracy and high rates of infant mortality are the abysmal result.

SECURITY FORCES
Somalia: 10
In a few parts of Mogadishu, the government or African Union peacekeepers are in control. Elsewhere, it's Islamist militias, local warlords, or an assortment of rival clan factions.

FACTIONALIZED ELITES
Somalia: 10
Islamist and clan organizations vie for control throughout the country, and internal shake-ups have made the government spectacularly unstable.

These twelve factors don't always tell the whole story, a few Latin American countries are demonstrating some very worrying paths. Organized crime and drug trafficking only the beginning.

Its no secret that many of these nations are struggling hold on to any consistent form of government, much less provide basic necessities for poverty stricken nationals. Chaos and lawlessness are often the result of a fractured populace who suffer from a myriad of afflictions: hyperinflation, disease, insurgencies, ethnic clashes. Hope remains, countries having moved out of the top 20 in the past few years include Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Colombia. Although as both the contributing organizations point out, there are still many nations balancing on the edge of stability, inching toward their breaking point.