These maps were created by an organization called Fund for Peace. The Fund for Peace is a non-profit organization that works to promote sustainable security worldwide and prevent violent conflict through research training and education. They focus on the problems of struggling, or failing states and work to create practical and approachable tools to avoid conflict. We discussed the significance of the Fund for Peace and their contribution to promoting sustainability. The main objective of these maps is to promote greater sustainable security, which is the ability of a state to solve its own problems peacefully without an external military or administrative presence. In our presentation, on of the first things students noticed was the color gradient. A “green” country is normally considered more sustainable, so in the map, the color green indicates a more sustainable country. The color red is very bold, so it indicates that the country needs to change what it is doing because it is a failed state. Labelling a state as failed, however, has created many issues. It is argued that it eliminates all hope for future success. Therefore, in 2014, the index was renamed the “Fragile States Index” to imply that the state still has potential and has not completely failed. Although our discussion time was cut short, we still were able to learn some very interesting new things about this breaking news.
-Cynthia and Lauren