12
Mar
A growing challenge for the European Union (EU) in years to come will be fragile and conflict-affected states (FCAS). Although definitions of what constitutes a FCAS vary, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, which leads much of the aid donor community’s analysis on fragility) currently classifies 47 states as fragile – around one quarter of the world’s countries. Moreover, increasingly many of these FCAS states are the EU’s neighbours, whether in the Levant, North Africa or Eastern Europe.1
Addressing the challenge of fragile states, therefore, should be a central priority for European policy-makers. It is clear that FCAS, both in Europe’s neighbourhood and beyond, can threaten Europe’s own security and prosperity. Moreover, the global goods that the EU seeks to promote – for example in the areas of security, climate and environment or economy – cannot be achieved while a significant proportion of the world’s states remain weak, conflict prone and unable to effectively manage their own affairs or participate in collective multilateral action. Finally, the EU’s own norms and policies commit it to assisting those populations most severely affected by poverty, conflict, and human rights violations, many of whom live in FCAS.
The EU’s commitments to dedicate a higher proportion of its aid to fragile and conflictaffected states in coming years, as well as its recent adoption of a Comprehensive Approach2 to crisis and conflict, can be important steps towards a more holistic and effective European response to the complex challenge of state fragility. As European policy-makers think through what a truly comprehensive response to fragility should involve, they must look beyond issues of institutional coordination – important as these are – to ask deeper questions about what fragility will look like in the future, which factors will drive it, and how other powers will respond to it.
Access and download the full FRIDE No 126 Working Paper at: http://fride.org/download/WP126_Fragile_states.pdf