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.

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.

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 ...

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: ...

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.

René Grotenhuis analyses policies intended to bring stability to fragile states and shows how they ignore the question of what gives people a sense of belonging to a nation-state.

This book investigates the emergence, the dissemination and the reception of the notion of ‘state fragility’. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the ‘fragile states’ concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. Contributors investigate the instrumental use of the ‘state fragility’ label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors ‘on the receiving end’, describing how the elites and governments in so-called ‘fragile states’ have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the OECD, the European Union and the G7+ in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the ‘fragile state’ concept. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.