Dear Editor,
In a feature essay carried in the October 30th issue of the Daily Chronicle, Dr. Randy Persaud refutes accusations that Guyana is a failed state, by going to the Failed States Index of 2009 issued by The Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy Magazine. For different reasons, I am also skeptical of failed state claims, particularly when countries like the United States come out on top (with its ongoing history of occupation and interventionism to support its ‘brand’ of democracy, as noted by philosopher and public intellectual Noam Chomsky in his critique of the failed state thesis), and when countries like Somalia are written off as the culprit par excellence with no history or contextualization (like the role of Western interventionism, in which Canadian ‘peacekeepers’ also played a part).
But while I definitely have my own reservations about the Index, including how it defines and measures failed states, I went to the report as Dr. Persaud suggested and found that while Guyana is clearly not in the worst red or alert zone, it falls into the second “warning zone, reserved for countries with numbers between 60 and 89.9.” As the report points out, “all countries in the red [Alert zone], orange [Warning zone], or yellow [Monitoring zone] categories display features that make significant parts of their societies and institutions vulnerable to failure. The pace and direction of change, either positive or negative, varies.” (you can visit the report at: http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=391&Itemid=549)
The total score of each country is arrived at by assessing performance on a number of indicators. One indicator is “chronic and sustained human flight”, which the report defines as consisting of “brain drain of professionals, intellectuals and political dissidents fearing persecution or repression; voluntary emigration of ‘the middle class,’ particularly economically productive segments of the population, such as entrepreneurs, business people, artisans and traders, due to economic deterioration; growth of exile communities”. On this indicator, Guyana’s score is 7.9, which if I read the table correctly puts it somewhere like 24th from the bottom (or around 153rd of 177 countries). This is how the Fund for Peace/Foreign Policy Magazine Report describes it: “Human flight remained extremely high in the FSI 2008 at 7.9. Guyana is one of the poorest countries in South America and suffers from a significant brain drain. The main reason for human flight within Guyana is the lackluster economy, which has prompted many people to seek better economic opportunities elsewhere in South America, the Caribbean, or if possible, the United States.” These figures for Guyana are supported by the recent Human Development Report, as well as earlier statistics from the OECD that show abnormally high out-migration rates from Guyana.
Since these disturbing migration statistics pertain to the overall index and come from the same report that Dr. Persaud asks us to rely on in his feature essay, I wonder how he reconciles these figures and commentary with the views he has recently expressed on GUYEXPO and in response to Mr. Wiggins and Mr. Lall (in your letters section), on Guyana’s growing middle class and improving infrastructure and amenities, all of which seem to paint a picture of stability and growth that should surely keep far more Guyanese at home?
Yours faithfully,
Alissa Trotz
