Six African nations are in the top 10 of an annual failed-state index, including Somalia, which heads the list for the fifth straight year after continued struggles with lawlessness and piracy

Somalia tops the 2012 Failed States Index because of “widespread lawlessness, ineffective government, terrorism, insurgency, crime, and well-publicized pirate attacks against foreign vessels,” the list’s compiler, Washington-based nonprofit Fund for Peace, said. The group’s eighth annual list, which ranks instability risks of 177 nations based on 12 social, economic and political indicators, was published by Foreign Policy magazine. Nations ranking high on the list aren’t necessarily failed states, but are facing enormous pressure stemming from factors such as uneven development, economic decline and human-rights issues, according to Fund for Peace. The top 10 nations on the 2012 Failed States Index are: Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yemen, Iraq, and Central African Republic. The biggest shifts happened outside the top 10 - mostly rankings of countries that experienced uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. The worst decline was in Libya, which went from well outside the top 60 to No. 50 "as a result of civil war, a NATO-led campaign of air strikes and the toppling of the (Gadhafi) regime," the Fund for Peace said. Syria, where an uprising has endured for more than a year, registered the fourth-greatest single-year jump in the index's history (from No. 48 in 2011 to No. 23 in 2012). Haiti, which jumped to the top 10 after 2010's devastating earthquake, is the list's sole Western Hemisphere representative in the top 10. Other notable rankings: Pakistan, No. 13; North Korea, No. 22; Iran, No. 34; United States, No. 159. Finland was considered the most stable, at No. 177.