Where’s my country?

Yes, there are around 30 territories missing in the Good Country Index (including Taiwan, Turkmenistan, South Sudan and all kinds of other beautiful, much-loved and highly respectable places).

There is only ever one reason for this: because we don't have enough data to give them a reliable ranking. And if the United Nations and the other organisations don't collect or don't publish the data, there's nothing we can do about it except wait until they do.

It's NOT because we've accidentally left them out, or we've never heard of them, or don't consider them a proper country, or because we're afraid of offending some other country that doesn't consider them a proper country, or because their scores are too low.

Technical Stuff:

All countries with missing data on more than 2 out of 5 indicators on any category are generally excluded. We have occasionally made an exception to this rule when there are less than 5 missing values overall.

Since the rankings are based on mean scores per category and missing values are ignored, the countries included in the Index are neither rewarded nor punished for any non-reporting.