Fragile States Index

The Fragile States Index is like a report card of how well countries are doing. Every year, experts from the Fund for Peace look at different things going on in different countries and then decide if those countries are doing well or not. They look at things like how their government works, how safe people feel in their country, how many people have enough food, and how much fighting there is in the country. After looking at all those things, they assign each country a “score” – the lower the score, the better a country is doing. A score that is very low means that the country is very stable, while a score that is very high means that the country is very unstable. Countries with a high score are called “fragile states” because they are more likely to break apart or have other problems.