An independent research organization, Fund for Peace, annually publishes an index called Failed States Index that also gets published in US magazine Foreign Policy. It conducts a global ranking of weak and failed nations on the basis of 12 economic, political, social and military indicators. Such 12 determining factors include movement of refugees, environmental degradation, chronic human flight, uneven economic development, sharp and severe economic downfall or decline, deligitimization of the state, violation of human rights, intervention of other nations and deteriorization of public services and etc. You can view a full discussion on the websites of Foreign Policy or Fund for Peace. They ranked 60 nations in order of their vulnerability to internal conflicts using these 12 indicators. The index gives an insight of the new world disorder; it also illustrates the real seriousness of the problem of weak and failing states. Today almost 2 billion people live in insecure states.

According to this ranking, Kyrgyzstan is at 41st place. Uzbekistan comes 22nd, Tajikistan 29th, and Turkmenistan 43rd. To compare, last year in the same ranking Kyrgyzstan came as 28th, so this year the situation looks definitely better.

So, what is a failed state? The Crisis States Research Centre defines a “failed state” as a condition of “state collapse” – e.g. a state that can no longer perform its basic security, and development functions and that has no effective control over its territory and borders. A failed state is one that can no longer reproduce the conditions for its own existence.
According to Social Watch, a project of the Center fro Media and Democracy, a “failed state” is one that has a “shattered social and political structure.”

This is not to say that Kyrgyzstan is among those states that are failed, rather to identify some factors showing the risk and danger that can threaten its future.