Fragile States
Resource Flows and Trends
By 2015, half of the world’s people living on less than USD 1.25 a day will be in
fragile states. While poverty has decreased globally, progress on Millennium Development
Goal (MDG) 1 is slower in fragile states than in other developing countries. Fragile
states are also off-track to meet the rest of the MDGs by 2015.
Fragile situations became a central concern of the international development and security
agenda in the 1990s. Since then, powerful forces have been influencing the causes
and manifestations of fragility, including the combination of democratic aspirations,
new technologies, demographic shifts and climate change. The last five years have
been especially tumultuous, encompassing the 2008 food, fuel and financial crisis
and the Arab Spring, which began in 2011.These events have influenced the international
debate on the nature, relevance and implications of fragility. While situations of
fragility clearly have common elements – including poverty, inequality and vulnerability
– how can we make sense of the great diversity in their national income, endowment
in natural resources or historical trajectories? How do we move towards a more substantive
concept of fragility that goes beyond a primary focus on the quality of government
policies and institutions to include a broader picture of the economy and society?
This publication takes stock of i) the evolution of fragility as a concept, ii) analyses
of financial flows to and within fragile states between 2000 and 2010, and iii) trends
and issues that are likely to shape fragility in the years to come.
Published on March 04, 2013
In series:Conflict and Fragilityview more titles