Bangladesh ranked far below stable country

Bangladesh has ranked 32nd in the ‘Fragile States Index-2015’ among 178 nations.

The country is placed ahead of Pakistan (13th) but behind India (69th) in the list prepared by the Fund for Peace by Foreign Policy magazine.

Bangladesh belongs to the category of ‘alert’, four steps - high warning, warning, low warning and less stable - below the rank of ‘stable’.

Four countries - South Sudan, Somalia, Central African Republic and Sudan - are in the worst category of “very high alert”. Twelve countries are ranked in the group of high alert and 22 countries are in the same rank as Bangladesh’s (alert).

Bangladesh has scored 91.8 in the index which means the higher the score the more fragility the country suffers.

Accordingly, South Sudan is the top scorer (the most fragile state) with 114.5 points in the list of 178 countries with Finland, the last one, scoring 17.7 points.

The ranking has taken stock of the year’s events, using 12 social, economic, and political indicators to analyse how wars, peace accords, environmental calamities, and political movements have pushed countries towards stability or closer to the brink of collapse.

Bangladesh has found it in more problems in areas of “factionalised elites” (9.6) and state legitimacy (8.5) followed by group grievance (8.4), public services and demographic pressure (both scoring 8.1). Human flights (7.5) are a major concern alongside uneven economic development (7.1), human rights (7.1) and security (7.1). Poverty (6.7), refugee (6.6) and external intervention (5.7) come next, as fragility is defined by 12 indicators.