In the seven years of the Failed States Index, Somalia has had the ignominious distinction of occupying the worst spot for the past four years straight. Even with a relatively functional and pretty much autonomous "statelet" in the north, Somaliland, the country as a whole still manages to score badly enough to make up for that glimmer of unrecognized hope.

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Worse still, Somalia is in no danger of losing its position anytime soon. A combination of widespread lawlessness, ineffective government, terrorism, insurgency, crime, abysmal development, and a penchant for inconveniencing the rest of the world by taking merchant vessels hostage has given the country a score that -- much as they seem to try -- neither Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) can hope to match.

At first glance, the map tells a broader story of stagnation. A few outposts of relative order -- Western Europe, the north and south extremes of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, along with Japan and South Korea -- represent the world's hubs of sustainability and relative stability. But between those areas of green and yellow is an awful lot of red and orange, representing different degrees of danger. With some exceptions, the deepest shades of red can be found in South Asia and across Africa's middle, where conflict is frequent and human suffering all too common. Sadly, the colors have not changed much over the years.

But it would be wrong to assume that one year's Failed States Index map is a carbon copy of its predecessors. This year, Mother Nature was to blame for some of the most significant worsening. Haiti, which saw a devastating earthquake in January 2010, suffered the most, climbing to the fifth spot on the index. Another massive temblor shook Chile in February, killing as many as 500 people and destroying buildings and infrastructure. Deadly floods in Benin, the worst since 1963, displaced nearly 700,000 people and led to significant outbreaks of cholera. Drought and poor harvests led to a food crisis in Niger. Although natural disasters affecting major population centers will almost always have a significant impact on countries, the state's capacity to adequately respond makes the difference between a manageable crisis and a humanitarian catastrophe.

Elsewhere in Africa, ethnic violence in northern Liberia and renewed separatist troubles in Senegal's Casamance region led to setbacks in both countries' progress. In Rwanda, the increasing authoritarianism of President Paul Kagame, including further restrictions on the media and opposition groups, did no favors for the country's score card. But the picture in Africa is not all bad, with three of the top 10 most improved countries for 2011. Sudan and Chad improved their scores slightly largely due to minor abatements of existing conflicts in both countries; Algeria also improved substantially, in no small part due to the government's more effective combating of regional terrorist groups.

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