The Philippine Online Chronicles

For the past six years now, the website Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace have been collating figures from all over the world to see which countries could be considered as “failed” states and which ones are in danger of falling into turmoil. The team uses a set of twelve parameters with numerical statistics ranging from 0.0 to 10.0 to assess the ability of the nation to exercise the usual responsibilities and functions of a state. The higher the score, the more “failed” the state is when it comes to that parameter.

According proponents of the study, there are a few characteristics that indicate that a country is falling into a state that could be considered to be “failed”.

The first one is the physical loss of its territory or having the state monopolize the ability to use force. Losing territory clearly suggests that the security and military forces of a government is unable to stave off threats. Force is used by the police and other security forces to ensure that peace and order is observed. Once other groups can exercise force with impunity, there is a sense of failure with regards to keeping everything in line.

The deterioration of the government’s hierarchy also indicates the inability of the ruling body to make decisions through the necessary protocol. Not having leadership in this sense is grounds for labelling a country as a failed state.

A country is also expected to have the minimal public services to its people like power, running and potable water, sewage systems and other needs such as infrastructure, healthcare and education. The inability of a country to take part as a member of the international community is also seen as a sign of failure of that state.

Essentially, the state can fail in terms of its political systems, social services, diplomatically, economically and at times, militarily. As expected, this sort of label can be highly contentious would probably be rebuffed by the countries who are labelled as such since the ratings are inexact and often arbitrary.

The indicators

There are twelve parameters that are analyzed when it comes to the social situation in a country. These are the following:

1. The demographic pressures are derived from the raw numbers of the population like population density and the amount of stress it places on the country and communities themselves. There are also various socio-cultural issues that are encompassed here including the concentration of settlements, the access to transportation and the trends regarding ownership and occupancy of the land.
2. The massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples clearly creates a recipe for disaster. This can cause violence against the settlers and new and unforeseen stresses on a country’s food supply, water services and other basic services.
3. The presence of illegitimate governments hampers the ability of the duly-elected officials to exercise their power and enforce the law. This weakens the ability of the government to keep the peace and allay fears of the citizens.
4. Brain drain refers to the exodus of educated and trained personnel to other countries. These professionals include educators, doctors, engineers, lawyers and journalists.
5. The ability to provide public services is also an indicator of being a failed state. Services that are expected to be given to the public include education and healthcare.
6. Inequality within the economic strata that is overwhelmingly tilted to one side is also seen as a gross negative. Having oligarchs or a overly wide base on the economic pyramid is a sign that the economic gains does not translate to the improvement of the lives of ordinary citizens.
7. Group grievances relates to the presence of distinct groups that are either struggling to break away from the country or a faction that is trying hard to damage of destabilize the nation.
8. The observance of human rights is also something that is looked at by the researchers. A country must be able to not only defend but uphold citizens’ human rights under all circumstances. Clearly, states that are the promoters of human rights violations are going to score very high for this criterion.
9. Having the country’s economy decline is also one reason to score high in one parameter. Bad strategies and poorly managed resources and finances make for one potentially bankrupt economy – never a good thing for countries with thousands to millions of people.
10. The absence of security forces to control the situation in hot spots is also a big sticking point. This reflects the overall peace and order situation in the country.
11. The appearance of factionalized elites also suggests that there could be impunity in that nation. These elites may be grouped according to political or religious ideology.
12. The presence of external intervention suggests that the nation has failed as a whole to deal with its problems on its own and has had to ask for considerable assistance from allies abroad.

Overview

The world map representation of the study for the determination of “failed” states is coded according by color. The ones in red are considered to be in the “alert” level meaning that the state has already “failed” in the eyes of the observers. The orange countries fall under warning and most countries have this designation. Yellow means moderate while cyan means that the country is more or less stable or sustainable.

The 'sustainable' and 'stable' states

The team that conducted the study must be very exacting with their standards because out of the almost 200 countries listed, only eight countries received the highest rating of “most stable”. These countries included the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark along with Ireland, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand.

The countries rated as “stable” included Japan, South Korea, Singapore and much of Europe west of the Balkans including Iceland, Portugal, Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Americas have four “stable” countries in Canada, the United States of America, Argentina and Chile. Oman is the only nation in the Middle East that was considered to be “stable”.

The top twelve

This is absolute the “top” list that you wouldn’t want your continent to be a part of. The African continent takes a lion’s share of the places on this list and if you look at the map, the entire central portion of the continent is under the “alert” classification.

For the third year running, Somalia was named as the world’s most failed state. With almost two decade’s worth of in fighting and having warlords overrun the entire country, it’s really easy to see why Somalia would get the top spot. The world’s problem with Somalian piracy is was definitely highlighted last year due to many high profile hijackings that happened near the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa. A child in Somalia has a 20 percent chance of dying before reaching the age of five due to the horrendous living conditions in the country and the inability of the government to provide for basic public utilities and services. This figure is among the highest in the entire world. Across the board, Somalia got scores that were either 8.0 or higher. Somalia scored the worst possible score of ten on the criteria on refugees, factionalized elites, delegitimization of the state as well as its ability to secure its national interests.

The landlocked nation of Chad is second on this unflattering list of nations. Chad is considered by many analysts as one of the poorest nations in the world no thanks in large part to their corrupt government. The ecological disaster of the disappearance of Lake Chad certainly doesn’t help in the quelling of the human suffering in the country. The child mortality rate in Chad is at a heart-breaking 209 per 1000 live births.

Sudan – Africa’s largest country and two-time number one on the “failed” states list – is number three for 2010. Despite falling down two spots since their reign at the top, conditions in Sudan still hasn’t improved much. The ongoing clashes between the Janjaweed militia and the ethnic people living in the province of Darfur in the southern part of the nation still rage on and this has caused an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. The response of the rest of the world has been insignificant in terms of the cost of human suffering and the government has barely done anything to help aid workers get to the conflict zones safely.

The tumultuous and chaotic southern African nation of Zimbabwe is fourth. Once a very strong economy in the African continent; Zimbabwe has fallen into an economic rut due to the policies of Robert Mugabe. This has caused inflation to sky rocket like crazy making the currency in the nation almost worthless. Most of Zimbabwe’s educated professionals have left the nation to seek employment elsewhere due to the poor economy and deteriorating political system. The latest figures show that the average Zimbabwe citizen only earns 170 USD for an entire year.

Another large African country – the Democratic Republic of Congo – is at number five. Due to the large size of the country, the government is hard pressed to maintain the peace and order situation. The public services such as health care and education are hard to come by and the geographical context of the country certainly makes it very hard to reach certain sectors of the population.

Other nations that are in the top twelve include the very politically-unstable nation of Afghanistan that is still being fought over by the United States’ forces, the Taleban and local warlords who are trying to take advantage of the chaos. Another war-torn country; Iraq, is number seven on the list due the continued episodes of bombing and deadly attacks against government, military and civilian targets.

The Central African Republic along with Guinea take up the next spots on the list. Both countries have struggled to get their economies off the ground since their independence from the European colonizers. Both countries have great potential to do well economically due to their great wealth in terms of natural resources but the per capita income of citizens of both countries are well below 1000 USD a year.

The nation of Pakistan is the first country in the list to have nuclear technology making the tense political situation in the country a cause for concern not only for people in Pakistan but for other countries who share its border like India and China. A good part of the tension comes from the War on Terror that has often times spilled through the Afghan border. Pakistan has become the hideout of choice of the Al Qaeda forces that used to be in Afghanistan. The geography of Pakistan is also challenge for the government. It could be recalled that it took a while before help was sent to the devastated region of Kashmir during the 2005 earthquake. Pakistan is also among the world’s most populous nations.

One nation that didn’t catch a break this year was Haiti that was pummelled by successive hurricanes before getting walloped by a strong earthquake that pretty much levelled the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The situation on the island has never been really good to begin with due to level of corruption and incompetence in the government but the natural disasters certainly didn’t help at all. As Haiti looks towards its long term recovery, it would be interesting to see whether or not the government and the civil society could pick up the pieces and emerge with a better country after their toughest days yet.

The nation of Ivory Coast that topped the list during its first edition is out of the top ten but not quite in a good position. After six years since the list was first made. Typical of African countries, the state has serious economic shortcomings and a peace and order issue due to the presence of groups that are trying to take power away from the duly elected government. The situation has improved somewhat from 2005, but it’s still not looking good for the Ivory Coast.

The countries of Honduras, Guatemala, Nigeria and Iran are also on the radar of the researchers as far as teetering closer to failure is concerned. All four countries have had to go through massive upheavals and tough economic times coupled with an uncertain security situation.

Where does the Philippines fit?

It’s quite sobering and embarrassing that the Philippines is ranked 53^rd overall. The country received a very poor rating of 8.6 on the parameter regarding the “delegitimization of the state”. Across the board, the scores were bad. The best score came from economic parameter were the nation scored an almost decent 5.8.

The Philippines has the second worst ranking in Southeast Asia. The only countries that did worse in the study were the nations of Myanmar that is still led by a military junta and the relatively new nation of East Timor that just recently broke away from the archipelagic nation of Indonesia.

The Philippines has always been a fixture on the list since it began in 2005 and based on current trends, there seems to be no end in sight in the country’s unenviable reign at the upper half of the list.