The World Bank says Cambodia is a Fragile State at Risk of Collapse

Oy. Now, the World Bank is clearly not a friend of progressives, but as long as one has taken the odd statistics class and can read data, they’re a great place to get some raw data (not as good as the FAO, but good). So it’s startling when the World Bank claims, as they did on September 14th, that Cambodia is a ‘Fragile State’ at ‘risk of collapse’ due to ‘worsening governance.’

The ‘fragile state’ designation is the public version of the World Bank’s in-house designation of LICUS (Low-Income Countries Under Stress), a designation which properly asserts the similarities and continuities of Cambodia with Sub-Saharan Africa. You can take a look at the report on the World Bank’s web page here, or download it from my web page directly, here [pdf].

News reports on this announcement can be found over at KI Media (please try to ignore the hate-filled ‘comments’ which flood the KI Media boards from overseas Khmers). The subsequent conference with Nisha Agrawal of the World Bank’s Cambodia office, which reports that Cambodia’s governance is worsening, can be found here.