Burma Listed Among Most Failed States

Burma has been listed in 14th place o­n a 2007 "Failed States Index" created by the influential US magazine Foreign Policy.

Using 12 social, economic, political and military indicators, the magazine ranked 177 countries in order of their vulnerability to violent internal conflict and societal deterioration based o­n data from more than 12,000 publicly available sources. The magazine is owned by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The index gives countries a maximum of 10 points each for its social indicators of instability, with higher scores indicating greater instability.

This year, Burma's highest scores (worst) were 9.8 for human rights (.2 behind Sudan), 9.1 for delegitimization of state and 9.1 for group grievance. Its best score was for external intervention with 4.0 points.

Burma was ranked 18th in 2006 and 23rd in 2005.

On the magazine's Web site, the authors of the index said, "One of the leading benchmarks for failed state status is the loss of physical control of territory or a monopoly o­n the legitimate use of force."

Other attributes of state failure include the erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions, an inability to provide reasonable public services and the inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community.

The Failed States Index—created annually since 2005—presents a diagnosis of the problem, the first step in devising strategies for strengthening weak and failing states, according to the magazine.

According to the authors, about 2 billion people live in countries that run a significant risk of collapse.

"These insecure and unstable states are breeding grounds for terrorism, organized crime, weapons proliferation, humanitarian emergencies, environmental degradation and political extremism—threats that will affect everyone."

While Sudan and seven other sub-Saharan African countries are among the 10 most failed states, the o­nly non-African states in the lowest 10 scores were Iraq (second o­nly to Sudan) and Afghanistan, ranked eighth.