Donors and the 'Fragile States' Agenda: A Survey of Current Thinking and Practice

This report for JICA outlines the fragile states (FS) agenda as it relates to international development and aid. The agenda emerged during the 1990s, growing rapidly in the new millennium with the joining of development and governance goals on the one hand and peacemaking and global security concerns on the other. This report focuses on the experiences of three key donors: the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany. It also provides case studies showing the operationalisation of the agenda in three fragile states, namely, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Nepal. Because the FS agenda is relatively new, the policies, tools, and institutions to implement it are still being developed. To date, implementation efforts have remained largely uncoordinated and incomplete. Bringing coherence and ‘joined-up’ approaches to the operationalisation of fragile states programming is therefore a priority for the wide variety of actors involved