International Development Organizations And Fragile States

This book addresses a conundrum for the international development community: The law of development cooperation poses major constraints on delivering aid where it is needed most. The existence of a state with an effective government is a basic condition for the transfer of aid, making development cooperation with ‘fragile’ nations particularly challenging. The author explores how international organizations like the World Bank have responded by adopting formal and informal rules to engage specifically with countries with weak or no governments. Von Engelhardt provides a critical analysis of the discourse on fragile states and how it has shaped the policy decision-making of international organizations. By demonstrating how perceptions of fragility can have significant consequences both in practice and in law, the work challenges conventional research that dismisses state fragility as a phenomenon beyond law. It also argues that the legal parameters for effective global policy play a crucial role, and offers a fresh approach to a topic that is central to international security and development.

This book contributes to a “rethinking” Canadian aid at four different levels. First, it undertakes a collective rethinking of the foundations of Canadian aid, including both its normative underpinnings – an altruistic desire to reduce poverty and inequality and achieve greater social justice, a means to achieve commercial or strategic self-interest, or a projection of Canadian values and prestige onto the world stage – and aid’s past record. Second, it analyzes how the Canadian government government is itself rethinking Canadian aid, including greater focus on the Americas and specific themes (such as mothers, children and youth, and fragile states) and countries, increased involvement of the private sector (particularly Canadian mining companies), and greater emphasis on self-interest. Third, it rethinks where Canadian aid is or should be heading, including recommendations for improved development assistance. Fourth, it highlights how serious rethinking is required on aid itself: the concept, its relation to non-aid policies that affect development in the Global South, and the rise of new providers of development assistance, especially “emerging economies”. Each of these novel challenges holds important implications for Canada, for its development policies and for its declining influence in the morphing global aid regime.

Based on stakeholder consultations and supported by data, this report reviews the implementation of the Fragile States Principles two years after endorsement, and identifies priority areas to improve the impact of international engagement.

This report looks at ways in which the implementation of the Fragile States Principles does and does not work, based on evidence from the ground across six countries – Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste.

This report synthesises main findings and recommendations from a survey of 13 countries on international engagement in fragile states.

This report serves as a tool to better monitor the levels, timing and composition of resource flows to fragile states, and presents salient facts on aid flows to fragile states, the impact on fragile states of the three crises and the need for a whole-of-government response.

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 ...