Dealing with fragile and violent States

Opinion and Analysis

Local residents use a boat to cross floodwaters in Kabin Buri, east of Bangkok. Areas like Kabin Buri in Bangkok which experience floods need humanitarian aid. PHOTO | AFP 

By MIKE ELDON, mike.eldon@depotkenya.org

In a recent article, I wrote about how the World Bank is trying to accelerate development through participating in what it calls “collaborative leadership” (as opposed to the haughtier kind of all too common, but not always justified common perception).

Later, I reported on the “Rapid Results Approach” that is being promoted by the World Bank and others as a way of pushing the big development rock up the steep hill of poverty.

Today, I am going to describe the efforts of the World Bank to reduce poverty in countries that are the most difficult to operate in.

In common with the development community, it uses the term “conflict and fragile States” to describe such places, and recently it and others have added “violent” to the list. Many— but by no means all— are in Africa.

I travelled to Bangkok with a World Bank team that works exclusively in these challenging “CFV” environments, specialists in public financial management and procurement; governance and accountability (donor speak for anti-corruption); monitoring and evaluation; social and environmental safeguards; and private sector promotion.

We were there to run a course for World Bank staff based in conflict and post-conflict countries where poverty and insecurity are rife, where weak institutions and flimsy infrastructure are the norm, and where it is hard to deliver even basic services.

I spent several days with these tough people of fine minds and character, helping them share their experiences of what has worked and what has not.

During our time together they told their stories of unexpected breakthroughs and devastating setbacks, as they learned valuable lessons and drew support from one other.

Perhaps the biggest challenge these folk face is that while what they are trying to do is so hard and so risky, they operate in a large and tightly structured global institution which is only slowly becoming accustomed to what is and isn’t possible in these least robust societies.

But with some countries having pulled themselves out of deep poverty, the focus of development organisations such as the World Bank has increasingly turned to these most difficult ones.

Fragility keeps countries poor, and prevents them from making progress with the millennium development goals. 30 per cent of the world’s poor live in the 33 States defined as FCVs and the trend is increasing fast, as a result of which there is no choice, but to take the subject very seriously.

The experts distinguish between fragile States and institutions, ones that fall short on capacity, accountability and legitimacy.

And fragility, they note, exists not only in fragile states, and not only in poor countries, as evidenced, for instance, by the violence in countries like South Africa and DRC, Mexico and Brazil, with their high rates of homicides and criminality generally, that significantly impact their gross domestic product.

The causes of fragility are many, including trafficking of drugs, arms and people, illegal financial movements, land disputes, ideology, terrorism, piracy, contested elections and civil war.

Some countries are caught in fragility traps. They exist in a low level equilibrium that keeps the society somehow functioning, but with increasing poverty and degrading institutions.