DUSHANBE, June 26, 2013, Asia-Plus – Tajikistan with 85.2 scores is ranked 51st among 178 countries in the Failed State Index 2013.

The Fund for Peace (FfP) and the magazine Foreign Policy present the ninth annual Failed States Index (FSI).  The FSI reportedly focuses on the indicators of risk and is based on thousands of articles and reports that are processed by their CAST Software from electronically available sources.

 A failed state has several attributes.  Common indicators include a state whose central government is so weak or ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory; non-provision of public services; widespread corruption and criminality; refugees and involuntary movement of populations; sharp economic decline.  Since 2005, the index has been published annually by FfP and the magazine Foreign Policy .

Twelve factors are used by FfP to ascertain the status of a country: social factors -  mounting demographic pressures, massive displacement of refugees, creating severe humanitarian emergencies, widespread vengeance-seeking group grievance, and chronic and sustained human flight; economic factors - uneven economic development along group lines and severe economic decline; and political factors - criminalization and/or delegitimization of the state, deterioration of public services, suspension or arbitrary application of law and widespread human rights abuses, security apparatus operating as a “state within a state”, rise of factionalized elites, and intervention of external political agents.

There are 178 states included in the 2013 index.  FfP''s original methodology breaks the countries into four colored zones based on their aggregate scores.  A country in the "Alert" zone has an aggregate score between 90 and 120.  A country that is colored orange, the "Warning" zone, scores between 60 and 89.9. A country colored yellow, the "Monitoring" zone, has an aggregate score between 30 and 59.9.  A country colored green, the "Sustainable" zone, has an aggregate score of 29.9 or less.

Uzbekistan (86.9), Kyrgyzstan (85.7), Georgia (84.2), Azerbaijan (78.2), Russia (77.1) and Kazakhstan (69.8) are also listed among the countries in the “Warning” zone.

The FSI is a leading index that annually highlights current trends in social, economic and political pressures that affect all states, but can strain some beyond their capacity to cope.  Apart from the impact on their people, fragile and failed states present the international community with a variety of challenges.  In today''s world, with its globalized economy, information systems and security challenges, pressures on one fragile state can have serious repercussions not only for that state and its people, but also for its neighbors and other states halfway across the globe.

Linking robust social science with modern technology, the FSI is unique in its integration of quantitative data with data produced using content-analysis software to process information from millions of publicly available documents. The result is an empirically-based, comprehensive ranking of the pressures experienced by 178 nations. The FSI is used by policy makers, civil society, academics, journalists and businesses around the world.