While official development assistance continues to represent a significant source of funding for fragile states and economies, other kinds of financial flows emerge as the dominant resources in some situations.
According to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report on “states of fragility” — a name change that reflects the reality that “fragility exists in all states in different ways and to different degrees,” Alan Whaites, team leader of the effective and accountable institutions team at the OECD’s Development Cooperation Directorate, told Devex — per capita ODA to fragile situations has nearly doubled since 2000, but aid has not been distributed evenly.
Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, received the bulk of ODA flows — 22 percent — to fragile states and territories in the era of the Millennium Development Goals. Foreign direct investment, however, overshadowed aid to Iraq in 2012, the latest year for which comparison of different financial flows to fragile situations could be made.