The yearly release of lists and indexes of fragile states always seems to prompt criticism about how such handy measures, which attempt to capture weak state capacities, are themselves also fragile, as they fail to portray the nuanced nature of state fragility.
Based on its latest report on state fragility, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which has historically drawn its annual assessment of fragile situations from the World Bank’s harmonized list of fragile situations and the Fund for Peace’s fragile states index, seems to have been listening.
Jolanda Profos, OECD’s peace and conflict adviser and lead author of the organization’s annual fragile states report, pointed out that the purpose of the publication has been to respond to demand from senior policymakers, who at the senior-level forum on development effectiveness in fragile states in 2005 asked the OECD to develop a system for monitoring resource flows to countries beset by poverty, insecurity and weak governance.
About the author
Anna Patricia Valerio
Anna Patricia Valerio is a former Manila-based development analyst who focused on writing innovative, in-the-know content for senior executives in the international development community. Before joining Devex, Patricia wrote and edited business, technology and health stories for BusinessWorld, a Manila-based business newspaper.
