What has been learned since ‘fragile states’ became the central focus of many development actors? This report synthesises findings from a meeting series on Development, Security and Transitions in Fragile States. While understanding of how to work in fragile states has greatly improved, actually changing ways of working and succeeding in practice remains a challenge. The international community needs to be much more realistic about what it can achieve and to recognise that transition processes require long timeframes and depend largely on domestic processes and actors.
The term ‘fragile states’ has gained prominence in policy debates. In addition to defining fragility and principles of engagement, this report explores the links between security, stability and development, and looks at the challenge of transition in terms of justice, peace and statebuilding.
Accurate conceptualisation of fragile states is essential for appropriate policy interventions. Rather than define states as fragile/resilient or conflict/post-conflict, it is more useful to understand fragility or violent conflict along a spectrum. Along this spectrum, different dynamics change and interact over time and space, along with the structures and processes that characterise these societies. Key findings on the nature of fragile states were that:
- Development and security are interrelated, can be mutually reinforcing and are both central to sustainable transitions. However, one does not necessarily bring about the other. For example, development assistance can create instability if it seeks to legitimise a contested political settlement.
- For transitions to be successful and peace processes to be durable in practice, they need to be embedded in legitimate political settlements. These should include the informal, as well as formal, institutions and rules that often underlie governance systems and processes.
- The process of state formation is underpinned by elite bargaining and power struggles. As a result, states are not neutral entities and have an inherent logic of competition. State and institution building are thus highly political endeavours.
- Understanding complementarities, tensions and trade-offs between different agendas in fragile situations is fundamental. Promoting recovery from conflict is not strictly a humanitarian, security or development issue, but a shared space in which different instruments are needed.
- Societal transformation in fragile situations takes time, but external interventions often have unrealistic timeframes.
- Limited resources and, crucially, lack of capacity and knowledge of the local context are among the most common challenges in engaging in fragile situations.
Donors need to recognise and manage tensions between peacebuilding and state building. They must be more modest in their objectives, admitting that minimising problems may be the only feasible option in some cases. Other recommendations included the following:
- Donors and other actors should focus on better understanding the key features of transitions so that they their interventions can be better tailored. More frequent, higher quality political economy analysis needs to be commissioned and carried out.
- An improved international architecture is needed to engage in fragile situations. This should be based on more integrated and coherent approaches among different actors.
- There is a need for radical reform of UN peace-keeping operations. Current cumbersome, bureaucratic and risk-averse peacekeeping missions have very limited chances of contributing meaningfully to stabilisation, the protection of civilians or peace implementation processes.
- Donors and other agencies need to improve and increase human resources to engage effectively in fragile situations.
- Donors need to ensure that the priorities of their involvement in fragile situations are not compromised by domestic pressures and incentives, such as quick wins and returns on investments.
