Armenian Information Centre
72 Holford Cres.
Toronto, ON
M1T 1M2
Tel. (416) 497-8972 Fax (416) 497-0948
PRESS RELEASE
July 23, 2005
Contact: Aris Babikian
Turkey and Azerbaijan Failed States
In its July /August issue Foreign Policy magazine published its first annual
Failed States Index. Turkey and Azerbaijan are ranked 49 and 50 respectably
out of 60 countries surveyed. Turkey accumulated 86.1 points and
Azerbaijan 85.7 points. Armenia was not on the Index.
Produced by Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, the ranking measures the
world’s most at-risk countries, according to 12 social, economic, political
and military indicators. The Failed States Index was compiled using the Fund
for Peace internationally-recognized Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST).
According to Fund for Peace, a state is failing when its government is
losing physical control of its territory or lacks a monopoly on the
legitimate use of force. Other symptoms of state failure include the erosion
of authority to make collective decisions, and the loss of the capacity to
interact in formal relations with other states as a full member of the
international community. As suggested by the list of 12 indicators,
extensive corruption and criminal behaviour, large-scale involuntary
dislocation of the population, widespread violation of human rights, sharp
economic decline, group-based inequality, and institutionalized persecution
or discrimination are other hallmarks of state failure. States can fail at
varying rates of decline through explosion, implosion or erosion.
The U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned, “Ignoring failed states
creates problems that sometimes come back to bite us.” French President
Jacques Chirac has spoken of “the threat that failed states carry for the
world’s equilibrium.”
The 2005 Failed States Index is based on a sample of countries deemed to be
the most vulnerable to violent conflict. The Fund for Peace updated a list
of vulnerable countries using the “World Conflict and Human Rights Map”
produced by Leiden University in Holland. The map identifies states with a
history of high levels of internal violence and political oppression.
Tens of thousands of articles from global and regional open-sourced media
were collected from May to December 2004. The Failed States Index will be
updated annually.
The Fund for Peace is a non-profit educational, research and advocacy
organization based in Washington. Its mission is to prevent war and to
alleviate the conditions that cause war. Since 1996, it has specialized
primarily on reducing conflict stemming from weak and failing states.
Foreign Policy is published since 1970 and is a major, award-winning
magazine of global politics, economics, and ideas. It’s published by the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
[Original Report at:
]