Barbados has been determined to be the Caribbean’s ‘most stable country’ as it maintained its ranking in the 2024 Fragile States Index (FSI).

The Eastern Caribbean island, which already boasts the region’s most powerful passport, remained in 140th place out of 179 countries with a fragility indicator score of 44.7.

The Washington DC-based Fund for Peace (FFP), which has published the index annually since 2007, explained that the rankings examine countries “based on the different pressures they face that impact their levels of fragility”.

Based on FFP’s proprietary conflict assessment system tool (CAST), millions of public documents are analysed, and scores are designated for every country against twelve key political, social and economic indicators and over 100 sub-indicators.

“Twelve conflict risk indicators are used to measure the condition of a state at any given moment. The indicators provide a snapshot in time that can be measured against other snapshots in a time series to determine whether conditions are improving or worsening,” FFP added.

Conflict-torn African countries dominate the FSI’s ‘worst-ten’ rankings, as well as violence-plagued Caribbean neighbour Haiti, which rose from tenth to ninth place (compared to 2023) with a fragility indicator score of 103.5 out of the maximum 120 threshold.

Somalia, ravaged by its ongoing civil war, was ranked the world’s most fragile country ahead of Sudan and South Sudan, which are both gripped by similar armed struggles.

On the other end of the spectrum, Norway remained a shining example of statehood stability for a second consecutive year, with a fragility indicator score of 12.4.

Jamaica marginally improved on the Fragile States Index in 2024, rising to joint 109th place alongside Namibia and earning an indicator score of 59.3.

See top 10 rankings, as well as Caribbean placements below: