What to Do With Failed States--a Quest for a Solution from the Inside

Abstract

1. The phenomenon of so-called failed States poses many challenges for the international community and international law as such. Are such States still international subjects or do they lose their legal personalities? How may respect for the human rights of people living in such States be ensured? What can be done about this failed States problem? Here I will first present the notion of failed States and their characteristic features and then add a few words on the Failed States Index which is the most common instrument used when delving into the failed States issue. The last section will concentrate on the solution to State failure, with special emphasis on a bottom-up approach. In my opinion this solution is highly preferable compared to the others suggested. The reasons for that will be given below. 2. To describe the consequences of a deep and protracted crisis within a State the following notions are being used: failed State, collapsed State, failing State, weak State, fragile State or rogue State. S.R. Ratner and G.B. Helman were the first to use the term “failed State” in 1993. In their opinion a failed State is one “utterly incapable of sustaining itself as a member of the international community”. They characterized those States as descending into violence and anarchy—imperiling their own citizens and threatening their neighbors through refugee flows, political instability, and random warfare […]. The massive abuses of human rights—including that most basic of rights, the right to life—are distressing enough, but the need to help those states is made more critical by the evidence that their problems tend to spread. Although alleviating the developing world's suffering has long been a major task, saving failed states will prove a new—and in many ways different—challenge.1