There have been other threads talking about the worst city in the US. Whether its ugliness, poverty, crime, etc., it invariably involved Gary, Camden, and E. St Louis.
With that criteria, what would be the worst country? Not even third world, but dead in the water. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a country with active conflict (like Iraq or Somalia), but countries that don’t have a realistic chance of making it even in the “best” of times. Granted, most of these countries will have a degree of instability, but I guess I’m also talking about infrastructure, lack of resources, and general poverty. It’s a broad category, but I always find reading the anecdotes (especially of those who visited) fascinating.
Niger
Liberia
Eritrea
Haiti (so I’m not picking on Africa)
Granted, some of the “third world” countries aren’t really that horrible. I was very surprised with how nice parts of Manila looked (from my trip in 2004). So, it may be interesting to read about those.
Here are some results from a recent world happiness study by country (from less crappy to worst; the bottom 15).
155 Djibouti
156 Cameroon
157 Botswana
158 Turkmenistan
159 Equatorial Guinea
160 Ethiopia
161 Burkina Faso
162 Eritrea
163 Sudan
164 Uganda
165 Sierra Leone
166 Central African Republic
167 Zambia
168 Cote d’Ivoire
169 Angola
170 Niger
171 Chad
172 Rwanda
173 Malawi
174 Lesotho
175 Burundi
176 Congo, Dem. Rep. of the
177 Swaziland
178 Zimbabwe
(Denmark came in 1st place in case you are wondering and it is partially attributed to low expectations. That stoner in the back of the class was right.)
I think Iraq would be high on that list. I’m biased, I just finished another year there, but it is hell on earth: a failed state that is also the nexus of an international conflict.
I’ll go with #6 on GIGObuster’s linked list - Sharp and/or Severe Economic Decline. I feel that the remainder derive from that one single item. Some countries on the list have never known better.
You mean Switzerland, right? Denmark comes up at #11 on that list.
My mind immediately went to Zimbabwe. Not only is it in terrible shape (and getting worse), but the added fact that well within living memory it was a fairly stable, prosperous country has to rub all sorts of salt into those wounds.
It seems to me that one should consider future prospects. Iraq and Burma, for example, have resources that at least give them a fighting chance, even if it’s going to take a while. Pakistan has relatively large number of educated citizens. Somalia and CAR? Smart money is probably on the snowball in Hell.
According to an NPR program I listened to in the 90s (and which is thus unavailable for a specific cite), Africans seldom see themselves as citizens of a nation-state, and more commonly identify with a tribe; regardless of the actual conditions they live in, it’s not surprising that they see these entities they’re not really a part of as bleak crapfests.
Based on PJ O’Rourke’s description of the place, I’d rank Albania (circa 1994) among the worst of the worst. It is fucked beyond repair or healing. Xeroxed US dollars were accepted as currency and the economy was wrecked multiple times by chain letters of the “Send five dollars to the last person on this list” variety. Those were the least of their problems.
I’m not much of a world traveler. Canada is the only foreign country I’ve visited, and they seemed pretty solid.
Yeah, well if you’d just emerged from one of the most repressive regimes on the planet, I bet you’d need some time to adjust as well.
Albania is doing much better. The economy is growing pretty fast, and has been since about 2000. And while the country does have problems, it is an emerging democracy with a market economy, and is nowhere near the basket case some other countries mentioned here are.
I saw some footage of Khartoum that made it actually look pretty damn nice, at least along the banks of the Nile. I hear Mad Dog has a big place there.
I spent some time in Zimbabwe in summer 2001, and although things were going down the pan pretty sharply at that point, I have to say that I don’t think the country itself is beyond repair, as per the OP. Certainly it is not an unattractive place; on the contrary much of it is stunningly beautiful, and it has plenty of natural scenery to pull in the tourists. (Victoria Falls, for one; Matopos National Park for another.)
If Mugabe goes soon then there is a good chance it will bounce back pretty quickly. The country still has a lot of resources; it’s a fertile place unlike some of the dustbowls of central/subsaharan Africa.
Just as a measure of how rapidly things have gone downhill in that time: when I was there, £1 bought about 250 Zim dollars (on the black market – officially it was about 80). By summer 2006, that figure was over 1,000,000. The dollar was revalued, with one new dollar worth 1,000 old dollars. Currently £1 buys about 20,000 new dollars, or 20 million old ones.
