South Sudanese Police Cadets taking oath during their graduation ceremony at the Juba Football Stadium. September 17, 2012. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy Gideon Lu'b

By Beatrice Paez
SAINT JOHN, New Brunswick, Canada, Jun 18 2015 (IPS)

For the second year in a row, South Sudan has been designated as the most fragile nation in the world, plagued by intensifying internal conflict that has displaced more than two million of its people.

Headline-making events of the past year have spurred much of the movement of countries’ rankings – for better or worse – in the Fragile States Index (FSI), a joint annual report by Foreign Policy magazine and think-tank Fund for Peace (FFP) released on Jun. 17.“For me, Nigeria was one of the most interesting stories of the year. All indicators showed intensive pressures on all fronts...and yet people were able to really rally at the local, national level.” -- Nate Haken

Sub-Saharan Africa found itself leading the pack, with seven out of the top 10 countries ranked as the most fragile. As far as regional trends go, the Islamic State’s encroaching influence pulled states such as Yemen, Libya, Syria and Iraq into the top 10 most-worsened countries of 2015.

Cuba stood out as the most-improved country this past decade, owing its designation to the thawing of relations with the United States and the gradual opening of its economy to foreign investment. Though trends suggest the nation is on track to improving conditions, there remains the challenge of access to public services and upholding human rights.

In an effort to measure a state’s fragility, the index accounts for event-driven factors and makes use of data to illuminate patterns and trends that could contribute to instability. The report analysed the progress of 178 countries around the world.

“At the top of the index, countries do tend to move minimally, but at the centre of the index, you tend to see a lot more movement,” said Nate Haken, senior associate of FFP. “That’s partly because fragility begets fragility and stability begets stability.”

And yet, the report highlighted, there are outliers like Nigeria that defy easy categorisation even as pressures on all fronts – political, social, economic – would indicate a country on the brink of descending into conflict.

“For me, Nigeria was one of the most interesting stories of the year. All indicators showed intensive pressures on all fronts,” Haken told IPS. “Oil prices were down, there was more killing this past year.”

But in an unexpected turn, Haken noted, the political opposition led by Muhammadu Buhari emerged as a credible threat to incumbent Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party. He added that many expected a polarising outcome that would pit the north and south against each other, whatever the outcome.

“I think most observers looking at these trends thought this was bound to be a disaster,” said Haken. “Every empirical measure shows a high degree of risk and yet, people were able to really rally at the local, national level.”

Meanwhile, Portugal and Georgia joined the ranks of Cuba for the most improved, with strides being made in the economy.

Whereas some countries’ progress or decline has held steady, a closer look can reveal an emerging narrative, said Haken. The United States’ year-over-year score (ranked at 89) has remained flat, but group grievances – tensions among groups – has been increasing since 2007, with respect to the immigration of children fleeing Central America and protest against the police over racial relations.

Far from being a predictive tool, the index functions as a diagnostic tool for policy makers working in human rights and economic development to identify high-priority areas, he noted. As well, it serves to turn the spotlight on countries that seemingly have marginal bearing for the international community.

In the case of the Ebola crisis in West Africa, countries like Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone may not have figured large in headlines, but the “ripple effects across the region” also had far-reaching consequences for the international community as the world scrambled to contain the outbreak, Haken noted.

Demographic pressures – massive rural-urban migration – coupled with lack of proper road infrastructure gave way to the spread of Ebola.

“One thing that came out of the index is how critical infrastructure is for sustainable human security,” he said. “… Once it began to spread, it was difficult for medical personnel and supplies to reach the rural areas.”

This regional crisis, in particular, served as a reminder that “post-conflict” nations “on path to recovery” still face vulnerabilities, the report noted.

The index relies on 12 indicators (plus other variables) to make its assessment. They account for state legitimacy; demographic pressures; economic performance; intervention of state or non-state actors; provision of public services; and population flight, among others. Each indicator is given equal weight, and countries take a numerical score, with one for the best performance and 10 for the worst.

On this basis, policy makers are encouraged to use the index to frame research questions and to help determine the allocation of humanitarian aid.

Since 2014, FSI moved away from the use of the term “failed” in favour of “fragile,” as a way of acknowledging that in some instances, the pressures a state faces can be beyond its control, said Haken.

For instance, he cited refugee crises in which governments – ill-equipped or not – take on a large number of refugees.

“Failure connotes culpability somewhere, whereas that’s not what this index was ever trying to do,” he said. “It was looking at factors – some of which governments have influence over, some of which they don’t.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Twenty of the world’s most fragile states, including those currently affected by conflict, have achieved one or more of the development targets outlined under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the World Bank said this week.

In a new paper, bank researchers offer findings that six more states are on track to meet individual development targets ahead of the MDG’s 2015 deadline.

“This should be a wake-up call to the global community not to dismiss these countries as lost causes. These signs of progress do signal that development can and is being achieved, even amid fragility and violence,” World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Wednesday.

“But these challenges ahead for many countries are extremely tough. While these successes offer hope, the reality is that far too many fragile and conflict affected countries lag behind the rest of the world. We need to offer timely and critical support to improve the lives of people living in these fragile countries.”

The findings indicate significant improvements from a 2011 World Bank report that indicated that no low-income, fragile or conflict-affected country had achieved a single MDG.

The MDGs are eight international development goals, established in 2000 when all 193 United Nations member states and more than 20 leading international organisations agreed to a deadline for achievement by 2015.

According to the new report, the greatest progress has been on gender parity in education, the ratio of girls’ to boys’ enrolment in school. The analysis finds that eight fragile and conflict-affected states (including Guinea, Nepal, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Timor-Leste) have already met the goal to halve “extreme poverty”, those living on less than 1.25 dollars a day.

“The message that we feel these findings send is that fragile – and what some people refer to as ‘basket-case nations’ – can achieve and make progress in many of the areas associated with the MDGs,” Joel Hellman, director of conflict and fragile states at the World Bank, told IPS.

“It’s limited progress, but there are glimmers of hope that show that countries who make concerted efforts can and are making progress in individual areas. This is important because it highlights the areas that need further support in these countries. In addition, when you can see that progress tangibly, it creates further support for these goals.”

Hellman says the new numbers reflect both progress and better data-gathering and analysis on the part of the World Bank and the United Nations.

“We can’t make policies without information, and the MDGs have really galvanised countries and the international communities to support getting information to assess what is happening on the ground,” he says.

“With better information, we can start making better policy. Now that we have a lot more information about what is happening in these countries, this helps us assess where they are making progress in individual areas – targeting areas and sectors where particularly strong efforts have been made across the entire spectrum of targets associated with the MDGs.”

Still, Hellman cautions that there is a long way for these countries to go, noting that few of these countries will accomplish many more of the MDGs, with just 1,000 days left until the deadline passes. Further, these signs of success are in volatile countries, meaning that this progress could quickly be reversed.

Fractured model

Others suggest that this data could inadvertently paint an unduly rosy picture – and one that may not be filtering down to all of a country’s inhabitants.

“Countries are now in the midst of this global recession, facing really desperate conditions, so even in a country where you have growth, this growth is coming primarily from extractive industries, particularly oil, gas and mining,” Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank here, told IPS.

“So the successes on this list only represent the ‘one percent’, the elites who are benefiting. So for the World Bank to highlight that these countries are meeting at least one of the MDGs seems a bit superficial – remember, there are eight goals.”

Woods notes that countries of the global South need a role for government to determine their paths towards development, and she worries that the foreign direct investment-focused development model pushed by multilateral lenders has been shown to be detrimental to many developing economies.

“Foreign direct investment is mainly directed at extractive industries, and does not take into account environmental damage, worker’s health and rights, and the long-term cost for future generations,” she says.

“What we have seen is that this model for development continues to concentrate wealth in very few hands – often local elites – while large multinational oil, gas and mining companies benefit from an unregulated market where the role of government is kept out. Unless you change the fundamentals of those policies, countries will not be able to cut poverty in half.”

The alternative, she says, would create the space for national governments in developing countries to more actively choose their own development paths. This would include ensuring that those countries maintain the ability to protect particularly valuable sectors.

Countries with large rural populations and agriculture potential, for instance, need to be able to focus on creating opportunities for smallholder farmers to maintain their livelihoods.

“What we have instead, is the privileging of large corporations, many from the U.S. and Europe with heavily subsidised agribusiness, that create an uneven playing field where small landholders are unable to compete,” Woods says.

“The alternative is to have a local manufacturing base that creates jobs with liveable wages, so workers can feed their families and afford access to health care and housing. These are the elements of a stable community – and are needed not only in developing countries but even right here in Washington, D.C.”

Mali, long praised as a stable democracy and success story, was in reality a fragile state that collapsed, says a new report. Burned cars and abandoned tanks are relics of the violent fighting in Diabaly. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 20 2013 (IPS)

Development workers and aid strategists are urging the U.S. government to adopt a comprehensive strategy for addressing root problems in “fragile states”, warning that an outdated focus on military intervention is draining resources and exacerbating security problems.

Noting Washington’s ongoing policy confusion over how to deal with the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings, researchers with the Washington office of the Society for International Development (SID), an international network, are suggesting a restructuring of parts of the federal government to allow for longer-term planning and state-building initiatives.

A new high-level State Department position, the SID researchers say, should be mandated to focus on four issues: demographic pressures, inequality, fragmented security structures and state legitimacy.If our counterterrorism relationship with Egypt served as the core of our relationship, what tariff did we pay on other things that … would have been really important?

Importantly, they are also urging a delinking of state-building initiatives from broader military and intelligence activities. Not only do these latter remain focused largely on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency approaches, but they have tended to lurch from short-term crisis to crisis.

“Mali, for example, long praised as a stable democracy and success story, was in reality a fragile state that collapsed,” notes a new SID report, released here on Tuesday (online copies are not yet available). “Currently, some 40-60 states, representing over one billion people, are fragile political entities and potential arenas of instability.”

Beyond the security concerns, this has serious implications for development aims. According to the World Bank, by 2015 half of those living on less than 1.25 dollars a day will be in fragile countries. Further, the problem is getting worse, with research from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, reporting that extreme poverty doubled in fragile states from 2005 to 2010.

Yet, the report states, “The U.S. does not have a strategy for addressing the fundamental problem of fragile states.” Just two parts of the U.S. government are said to have a functioning definition on what constitutes a “fragile state” – the army and USAID, the overseas development agency.

“Because of the trends of history after World War II, the Cold War and now the threat of terrorism, an awful lot of our security policy tends towards military solutions,” General (Rtd.) Michael Hayden, a strategist now with George Mason University, said Tuesday at the release of the SID report.

“Fundamentally, the U.S. national security structure comes out of a law passed by Congress in 1947, and it’s a structure well-suited to the problems of the mid-20th century.”

Hayden told IPS that Egypt was one fragile state where the United States’ singular focus on the “war on terror” proved counterproductive.

“If our counterterrorism relationship with Egypt served as the core of our relationship, what tariff did we pay on other things that … would have been really important?” he asked.

“For example, how much did the American embassy [in Cairo] feel free to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood or establish contacts with the political opposition? And was that harnessed by how much they did or did not want to put the counterterrorism relationship at risk?”

Hayden suggests that such an approach may have made sense for a few years after the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, but says “even I can’t deny that this distorts other things that in the long term might be more important.”

Diplomatic experiment

The United States is far from alone in its failure to commit significant resources to addressing the base causes of instability in fragile states. However, some European countries have recently made moves in this direction.

Over the past two years, the British government has moved to target the bulk of its overseas aid programmes towards countries deemed fragile. The German government, too, has announced that it will be overhauling its official strategy for dealing with fragile states.

To a great extent, this new discussion is being led by the United Nations, which is currently debating how to add the unique concerns of fragile countries to the post-2015 iterations of the Millennium Development Goals. And, in late 2011, 19 countries agreed to become part of a framework known as the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, under which unstable states agree to a series of self-assessments aimed at strengthening certain indicators.

According to Pauline H. Baker, a co-author of the new SID report, the proposed framework, which she calls a “new diplomatic experiment”, needs to be seen as the United States’ potential offering to this discussion.

“There’s been a growing literature on this whole phenomenon, but very little government thinking about fragile states as a category of threats to security,” she says. “Previous studies have tended to focus on terrorism, political extremism or mass atrocities, but our view is that the United States needs to address the underlying drivers of this fragility, not merely react to the symptoms.”

This mindset has not subsided, she suggests, and instead is currently finding new ground.

“People are talking about Africa being the new frontier for counterterrorism, and all of the news that we’re seeing is all about military approaches,” she says. “But if you really want to fight terrorism, you have to fight the conditions that gave rise to it, and those are not military solutions – those are non-military solutions.”

She continues: “You have to deal with inequality, with demographic pressure, with the security forces in how they behave and how they’re structured.”

Willing partners

This conversation could well be moving forward in development policymaking here. In late January, a U.S. Army major made a high-profile call for USAID to be given a seat on the National Security Council.

Yet it remains unclear how exactly policymakers would decide on which fragile countries to engage with more closely. Baker and others involved in the new report stress that such initiatives would only work if Washington were to engage only with “willing partners”.

“We were very strong in saying that we can’t just barge in and say, ‘You’re a fragile state and this is the way we think you should be running things,’” she told IPS.

Instead, she says, the programme would require an “equal partnership” as well as a willingness to commit to broad-reaching reforms.

“In some cases – Afghanistan being one of them – we didn’t quite assess the commitment side of the story,” she says. “Countries who have regime survival as their primary focus, we won’t work with them – not until we know we’re working with a group of reformers who we feel really want to change their country.”