The Fragile States Index is an annual ranking of 178 nations based on their levels of stability and the pressures they face. The Index is based on The Fund for Peace’s proprietary Conflict Assessment Software Tool (CAST) analytical platform. Based on comprehensive social science methodology, data from three primary sources is triangulated and subjected to critical review to obtain final scores for the Fragile States Index. Millions of documents are analyzed every year, and by applying highly specialized search parameters, scores are apportioned for every country based on twelve key political, social and economic indicators and over 100 sub-indicators that are the result of years of painstaking expert social science research.

The 2015 Fragile States Index, the 11th edition of the annual Index, comprises data collected between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2014, thus, certain well publicized events that have occurred since January 1, 2015 are not covered by the 2015 Index.

The Fragile States Index scores should be interpreted with the understanding that the lower the score, the better. Therefore, a reduced score indicates an improvement, just as a higher score indicates greater instability. For an explanation of the various indicators and their icons, please refer to page 17. Also, in a departure from previous years, readers will notice a significant de-emphasis on rankings, as it is our firm belief that a country’s score (and indeed, its indicator scores) are a far more important and accurate indicator of a country’s performance, and that as much as countries should be compared against othercountries, it is more useful to compare a country against itself, over time. Hence, our rankings are now printed in reverse order, and our analysis now focuses more on broad categories rather than specific rankings. We have also changed our “Heat Map”, whereby “cooler” colors are now applied to more less at – risk categories. We trust this will provide a less alarming view of the globe.South Sudan has topped the Fragile States Index for the second year in succession, as the country continues to be wracked by internal conflict, fractious politics, and poverty. South Sudan is joined at the most fragile end of the Index by countries that have long struggled, such as Somalia, Central African Republic, Sudan, and D.R. Congo. However, a lack of change at the most fragile end of the Index (not to mention a similar lack of change at the sustainable end of the Index) belies the significant movement of a number of countries over the past year and indeed the past decade

Read the full report: FRAGILE STATES INDEX 2015

Source: FFP