AUS-FRAGILE-STATE-INDEX

The Fragile States Index, produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also in identifying when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink of failure. The Fragile States Index is a report released by the Fund for Peace and the magazine, Foreign Policy. This report has been released annually since 2005. The primary purpose of this report is to assess the vulnerability of sovereign states throughout the nation. All sovereign states that are members of the United Nations are included in the report when enough data is available with the exception of Taiwan, Kosovo, Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus, and the Palestinian Territories. The report uses indicators across four categories to determine if a state is vulnerable to conflict or collapse. The categories that are assessed include: Cohesion, Economic, Political, and Social. There are 12 different indicators used to determine the vulnerability of the states. These factors include human rights, public services, demographic pressures, refugees and internally displaced persons, and security. The higher a state is ranked on the list, the more vulnerable it is.