Fragile states are home to nearly 30 per cent of the world’s poor people. Though measures of fragility vary, such countries typically lack some of the basic tools of nation-building: good governance, strong policies, skilled personnel, functional infrastructure and services, educated citizens, an active civil society and a competitive private sector. Civil and border conflict is an all-too frequent reality. Poor people living in rural areas of fragile states are particularly vulnerable as they have very limited means to cope with the situation created by fragility.

Countries may be fragile in some respects and not others, and they may also move in and out of that condition. In this precarious environment, communities and families lack resilience, leaving them highly exposed to natural and human-caused disasters. The challenges of reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals are particularly daunting. The need to expand support and ensure that aid is effective in fragile states was highlighted in the Accra Agenda for Action.

Working effectively in fragile states requires a long-term, context-specific approach. For IFAD this means:

• Designing flexible but simple programmes that build community and government capacity
• Increasing the focus on women, indigenous peoples and vulnerable groups such as displaced households and returning soldiers
• Paying greater attention to mitigating and responding to natural disasters and conflict
• Strengthening resilience, land rights and natural resource management
• Harmonizing cofinancing procedures to reduce government transaction costs
• Building in-depth country knowledge, including through country offices and direct supervision of programmes, to guide programme design and implementation

Experience has shown that partnerships and knowledge-sharing are crucial to working in vulnerable states. For example, although IFAD is not a relief organization, cooperation with other agencies can help bridge the gap between emergency relief and development activities. The new IFAD Guidelines for Disaster Early Recovery address this aspect, because states that have suffered disastrous setbacks to development can become ‘poverty traps’ unless there is a swift transition from relief to longer-horizon recovery programmes. 

Despite the challenges facing fragile states, reflected in the often lower success rates of development projects, well-designed and closely managed programmes can help rural people to rebuild their livelihoods and prevent large segments of the population from slipping into poverty.