Bangladesh ranked 25th in this year’s Failed States Index prepared jointly by the Washington-based bimonthly magazine Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, an independent research and educational organisation.
Bangladesh, which held 24th position in the annual ranking of the world’s most vulnerable states in 2010, moved one point down the ranks this year suggesting improvement in its performance on a battery of indicators.
African country Somalia retained the top spot on the Failed States Index for the fourth year in a row with 113.4 score while, Pakistan is at number 12, Myanmar is at 18, Nepal at 27, Sri Lanka at 29 Bhutan at 50 and India at 76.
Other countries among the top 10 are Chad, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Central African Republic and Iraq.
The findings were made available on the Foreign Policy web site on Tuesday.
Bangladesh scored 94.4 in the FSI rankings that analysed 177 countries using 12 social, economic and political indicators of pressure on the state, along with over 100 sub-indicators including such issues as uneven development, state legitimacy, group grievance and human rights. Each indicator is rated on a scale of 1-10, based on the analysis of millions of publicly available documents, other quantitative data, and assessments by analysts.
A high score indicates high pressure on the state, and therefore a higher risk of instability.
About Bangladesh, the Foreign Policy web site said, ‘It is perhaps a measure of progress that instability in Bangladesh so far in 2011 has been the product of a turbulent stock market. Not so long ago, the idea that international investors would come to Bangladesh…would have seemed preposterous. But in recent years, investors have poured their money into Bangladeshi stocks. Fears that banks and other big investors might pull out triggered mass protests across the country… several times this year.
Despite the frequent shocks, Bangladesh’s macro-economy still looks strong and the government promised in May that it would see the best growth in decades, it said.
‘Bangladesh will need years of similar growth to transcend its years of stagnation: Two out of five Bangladeshis live under the poverty line. Any improvements will also be fighting the environmental clock. If sea levels rise just by 1 metre, scientists warn, 17 percent of the country could be submerged,’ the Foreign Policy said.
Since 2005, the index has been published annually by the Fund for Peace and the Foreign Policy magazine.
Ken Brill, president of The Fund for Peace, characterised the FSI rankings as providing a quick snapshot of how well states were coping with the variety of pressures with which they must contend.
He said that pressures on governments ripple across economic, political and social indicators; sometimes necessary steps taken to address one indicator adversely affect another.
The FSI 2011 will be formally launched on June 29 in Washington.
The Fund for Peace is an independent research and educational organisation based in Washington, and Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970.
-With New Age input
