Relessness is correct. See some YouTube videos about the two countries and you'll quickly realize that Syria is in a better position than Yemen is (although Syria is still not in a very good position)
swathes of yemen are already completely under militant rule and that amount grows everyday...same with afghanistan where al qaeda is making a terrifying comeback
It's #63 (#23 on this list), behind Uzbekistan and Guatemala. The US press tends to gleefully report what goes wrong in Venezuela, after years of being teased by Chavez, which is probably why Uzbekistan and Guatemala, and many countries in the Top 20, are less noticed than Venezuela. Also, many rating numbers are so close together that in real terms a whole bunch of nations are as "fragile" as each other.
While Venezuela would score poorly in economic areas, they don't have overpopulation or ethnic/religious conflict. It's not tough to imagine that things will rapidly improve once the Chavistas are gone. The problems in other countries are more intractable. Which is why the situation in Venezuela is so sad. It's entirely self-inflicted.
Really, if Venezuela isn't on this list, the list is silly. Maybe things have gotten worse since the list was compiled, but I don't believe there's a country more fragile than Venezuela that isn't in open civil war.
Two years have passed and Maduro has succeeded in making the country poor enough to appear on the list. I stand by my position that once those clowns are gone, Venezuela will rapidly improve.
I went that direction too. I thought those ones with all the a's and u's that are going to be totally underwater in under 50 years surely qualified as "fragile".
So I finally took a look at the actual report: there’s only 178 countries in it, and as far as I can tell, there are no small island nations in the Pacific Basin included, with the exception of the Solomon Islands. I’m guessing it was a matter of not being able to collect enough useful data due to their diminutive sizes.
That was fun! In a depressing sort of way... Nearly missed North Korea because I was thinking largely about government hold on power. Finally broadened my thinking a little bit. Some past experience with UN Peacekeeping made Solomon Islands an easy guess.
Cuba's not all that bad, relatively speaking. It's a very poor country, but that's about it. There isn't much violence. People don't live well by any stretch, but there is no civil unrest or threat of war. There is a lot of national pride too. I think most of us find the government's stronghold over the people upsetting (I certainly do), but a lot of Cubans genuinely believe(d) in Castro and support Communism. Whether that's a consequence of propaganda is a fair question...but I think most countries' citizens are swayed by propaganda. The real exacerbating factor for Cuba is the embargo/blockade, but with relations with the U.S. opening up, there is hope for the future in Cuba. Every nation on this list has a much, much bleaker outlook...
Your ignorance is not bliss! Cubans are literally dying to leave the country. There is plenty of violence, it just does not happen in public. The reason Cuba is not on many "worst of" lists is the government does not release honest figures. In Cuba babies born with any birth defect are murdered, guess what, those murdered children are not calculated into their infant mortality numbers.
Europe in general seems to be doing pretty well all things considered. Most of its countries are at the very bottom of the list. Highest is Russia at #65.
Feels like there was too much time. Normally I never would have guessed the Solomon Islands or East Timor over Thailand, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Iran and so on... but there was so much time I managed 100% with 1:23 left through almost random guessing. (well not completely random, skipped over Europe completely now that I think about it- didn't even guess Ukraine or Romania)
I know these guess-a-country quizzes typically are 4 minutes long. But even in most cases that seems like an excessive time limit. When you block out Africa and the huge number of countries that the continent represents, then 4 minutes becomes way too much. Should be 2 minutes, or at most 3, if you're going to exclude an entire continent.
Seconded, especially where, as here, you can safely exclude Europe from consideration. I guessed all of Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and still had time to start thumbing through Oceania. 100% with 0:19 remaining.
Yeah, but if fragility is associated with Africa it would be(and was, for me) difficult to come up with so many fragile countries out of the continent. So I think the amount of time is perfect.
Um...well, these are fragile states. Basically war, violence, flimsy government puts a country on this list. Besides the obvious government, North Korea is one of the most peaceful places on Earth.
Yeah, I don't think North Korea has as much crime as some of the nations on this list. They're not (really) engaged in a military conflict at the moment, despite the fact that the Korean War hasn't ended. But there is starvation in North Korea, so it could come close to being on this list.
While the majority of African countries are near the top, it is worth pointing out 17 of the countries are less fragile than this list, all of those except Tanzania are becoming less fragile, and of the fragile countries in Africa which would be on the list all of them are becoming less fragile too except 5 (Mali, Uganda, Cameroon, Burundi & Chad). I point this out because without this it is easy to continue thinking of Africa as a place with no prospects but it is in fact fast growing, vibrant and increasingly modern.
Imagine being so blindly partisan and in slavish lockstep behind an objectively terrible demagogue and narcissist that you view any valid criticism of them or one-line jokes made at their expense to be "hysteria."
I don't regard myself as any of the above, but I find it tiresome that one can't even get away from the world for a while to do a trivia quiz and read (relevant) comments without having to come across the same tedious political tripe to be found anywhere else. Give it a rest, kalba. Seriously.
Reality has been fairly exhausting lately, granted. But your escape of choice is to take a quiz on countries of the world that are politically unstable? Riiight.
i tried south sudan, niger, nigeria, mali, mauritania, libya, chad, burkina faso, somalia, mozambique, drc, car and egypt then finally realised the quiz is of countries outside of africa... read the notes!!!!
And missed one very obvious one near the USA. Nice quiz.