States of Fragility 2020 sets a policy agenda for fragility at a critical turning point: the final countdown on Agenda 2030 is at hand, and the pandemic has reversed hard-fought gains. This report examines fragility as a story in two parts: the global state of fragility that existed before COVID-19, and the dramatic impact the pandemic is having on that landscape.

Three years into the 2030 Agenda it is already apparent that those living in fragile contexts are the furthest behind. Not all forms of fragility make it to the public’s eye: fragility is an intricate beast, sometimes exposed, often lurking underneath, but always holding progress back. Conflict ...

Aid agencies increasingly consider anti-corruption activities important for economic development and poverty reduction in developing countries. In the first major comparative study of work by the World Bank, the European Commission and the UNDP to help governments in fragile states counter corruption, Jesper Johnsøn finds significant variance in strategic direction and common failures in implementation.

"... Explores the connections between fragile statehood and violent conflict, and analyses the limitations of outside intervention from international society."--P. 4 of cover.

When are developing countries able to initiate periods of rapid growth and why have so few been able to sustain growth over decades? This book provides a novel conceptual framework built from a political economy of business-government relations and applies it to nine countries across Africa and Asia, drawing actionable policy recommendations.

Setting macroeconomic policy is especially difficult in fragile states. Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile States addresses the many issues involved and considers ways to improve the effectiveness of macroeconomic management in the face of these constraints.

The world is getting more violent, and violence is occurring in surprising places. Over the past 15 years, 3.34 billion people, or almost half of the world’s population, have been affected by violence. The number of violent conflicts is decreasing, but conflicts are killing more people: conflict-related deaths have tripled since 2003. Violent extremism and terrorism are also on the rise. The economic cost of violence is rising too: the global economic impact of violence is a staggering USD 13.6 trillion, equivalent to 13.3% of Global GDP. And civilians, especially children and women, are most at risk. States of Fragility 2016: Understanding Violence takes a long hard look at violence in the world – and what we should do about it. The report showcases emerging thinking about violence, presents a new risk-based approach to monitoring various dimensions of fragility, and looks at financial flows in support of fragile contexts. Understanding Violence finds that development, peace and security efforts in the developing world have not kept pace with the new reality of violence. We need to dedicate more resources and attention to violence. And to be effective, we need to put people – especially youth – at the centre of our efforts.

In most regions of the world, federalism (territorial autonomy) is used as a successful institutional means of dispersing political power and accommodating ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity. The Middle East is an exception. Aside from the anomalous case of the U.A.E and Iraq's troubled experiment with federalism, Middle Eastern regimes have largely resisted efforts to decentralize political power. As a result, the norm in the region has been highly centralized, unitary systems that have, more often than not, paved the way for authoritarian rule or played witness to serious internal fragmentation and conflict divided along ethnic or religious lines.Federal Solutions for Fragile States in the Middle East makes an argument for the implementation of federalism in the post-conflict states of the Middle East. The argument operates on two levels: the theoretical and the practical. The theoretical case for federalism is backed by empirical evidence, but to accurately evaluate the practical and logistical feasibility of its implementation in any given case requires detailed knowledge of 'real world' political realities. The book's focus is on four post-conflict states — Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya — though the arguments advanced within have broad regional applicability.

The fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCAS) and small island developing states (SIDS) approach represents a new way of doing business for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in its most vulnerable developing member countries. FCAS and SIDS face unique development challenges such as a greater need for governance and institutional capacity building, geographic isolation, small populations, narrow asset bases, and armed conflict. The FCAS and SIDS approach—or FSA—introduces flexible processes and procedures that will allow ADB to tailor interventions to the specific challenges of these countries, with the goal of improving project results, and ultimately improving livelihoods.

Fragile states are a menace. Their lawless environments spread instability across borders, provide havens for terrorists, threaten access to natural resources, and consign millions of people to poverty. But Western attempts to reform these benighted places have rarely made things better. Kaplan argues that to avoid revisiting the carnage and catastrophes seen in places like Iraq, Bosnia, and the Congo, the West needs to rethink its ideas on fragile states and start helping their peoples build governments and states that actually fit the local landscape. Fixing Fragile States lays bare the fatal flaws in current policies and explains why the only way to give these places a chance at peace and prosperity is to rethink how development really works. Flawed governance systems, not corrupt bureaucrats or armed militias, are the cancers that devour weak states. The cure, therefore, is not to send more aid or more peacekeepers but to redesign political, economic, and legal structures-to refashion them so they can leverage local traditions, overcome political fragmentation, expand governance capacities, and catalyze corporate investment. After dissecting the reasons why some states prosper and others sink into poverty and violence, Fixing Fragile States visits seven deeply dysfunctional places—including Pakistan, Bolivia, West Africa, and Syria—and explains how even the most desperate of them can be transformed.