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Several years of research on the informal economy in West Africa give a perspective on the Sahel and Northern Mali and the following message for policymakers: invest in the informal sector.

The challenge is to look beyond obvious advantages and disadvantages and find practical ways to engage.

The next two years will be crucial for the West African country of Liberia. In 2016 the United Nations peacekeeping force UNMIL will transfer the full responsibility for security to the Liberian authorities, and in 2017 a new president will be ele...

The borders of the Sahel are vast and difficult, but not impossible, to manage effectively.

The emergence of fragile cities poses a growing security challenge and it is time to develop innovative solutions that are embedded in informal networks.

In Ethiopia and many African countries, we need a recalibration of developmentalist authoritarianism that feeds exclusion and conflict.

Religious actors are often able to give structure when the other institutions of a state collapse. However, their role and impact in development cooperation and international relations is routinely overlooked. When focusing on institutional multip...

List of sources for conflict and context analysis frameworks, outlining organisations with their corresponding analytical frameworks

The review of 88 frameworks for doing context analysis, originating from a broad range of sectors including development, military, research, policy and economics, shows that there are four aspects of analytical models that cover the breadth and de...

In the complex contexts of fragile or conflict-affected states, where international interventions can easily influence power relations, good context analysis is crucial. Systematically mapping these contexts allows international actors to work eff...

Since 2012, Mali has been suffering from what at first seemed to be a sudden outbreak of armed conflict which eventually led to a military response by France. At that moment, the conflict was framed predominantly as a battle against the rise of ex...

For more than two years, Mali has been suffering from a sudden eruption of armed conflict. In recent decades, economic, ecological, political and security factors have combined to create fertile ground for conflict. This led to ethnic tensions and...

Support to SMEs in fragile and conflict-affected states has become a priority for the international development community. Yet thorough analysis of the broader institutional context in which these SMEs operate is needed to explain inequalities in...

In response to Seth Kaplan: shifting from externally designed to local solutions, and from seeing poverty as isolated to the periphery to it being interconnected with the global economy and its inequalities.

In response to Seth Kaplan: Elites that are in the position to use the tools presented effectively, will advance their own agenda.

A major reason why less developed countries fail to develop is the structural exclusion of large segments of their population from their economic, social and political development. In my estimation, roughly three billion people—one out of eve...

The importance of moving beyond Defence, Diplomacy and Development towards Fair Trade, Financial Transparency and a Firearms Treaty to achieve human security in fragile states. 

On 15 May, The Broker and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs co-organized an expert meeting with the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The 25 participants – a mix of researchers from knowledge institutes, civil servants and representativ...

An old yet surprisingly relevant political idea – the social contract -- is today making the running in the competitive world of aid and development paradigms. 

Seizing space for civil society: An Overview of Six Countries - EADI Policy Paper Series - July 2013

The World Conference on Humanitarian Studies created space for debating international engagement in fragile and conflict-affected settings

The predictions in  Seth Kaplan’s analysis  that business will continue as usual appears too negative and one-sided. The New Deal provides a useful framework to better negotiate relations between unequal partners. 

Non-state governance: The legitimacy of non-state and state authorities in (post-) conflict settings should be understood from the perspective of citizens. 

Fragile states are characterized by a variety of institutional arrangements that exist alongside each other. This institutional multiplicity is a complex phenomenon, but not necessarily ‘good’ or ‘bad’. For donors and development organizations, it...

Against the background of growing international attention for ownership of development processes at local level, the discussion about non-state governance in fragile settings is extremely timely. Despite general acknowledgement of the importance o...

One of the key insights from policy discourses on fragile states is that these states can contain a variety of non-state forms of public authority. It has been convincingly argued that in the absence of functioning states, societies are not 'ungov...

Guestblogger Seth Kaplan's second blog post on the rise of the g7+ group of 18 fragile and conflict-affected states 

Guestblogger Seth Kaplan on the rise of the g7+ group of 18 fragile and conlfict-affected states 

The complex relationship between insecurity issues and development can be clarified by including 'development disruptor' goals in the post-2015 framework.

Africa remains doomed. This is what the Failed States Index 2013 claims. Three-quarters of the continent is portrayed as ‘critical’, and the other quarter as ‘in danger’ or ‘borderline’. 

How are inequality and conflict connected? This question has occupied the minds of thinkers and practitioners for many years. The common-sense argument sounds convincing: where there are large inequalities between rich and poor, the latter become...

At the end of November, 2,000 representatives of governments, international organisations and NGOs convened in Busan as the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. Just before the meeting we proposed four criteria by which to judge its outco...

The wording of the Outcomes Document from the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid is largely agreed, and reflects much of the new thinking on aid: statebuilding and peacebuilding; human security; transparency and results. 

“We’ll always have Paris” says one of the most famous lines from the movie Casablanca. In the international donor community, “always [having] Paris” would refer to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness launched back in 2005. Six years and two...

Peacebuilding has to be centre stage at the high-level debate on aid effectiveness in Busan.

Yesterday I attended a meeting, organized by the Civil Society Dialogue Network (CSDN), about the role that the European Union could and should play in conflict prevention and resolution in ‘situations of fragility’. 

Tomorrow morning I will board a flight to Santa Fe in New Mexico. I am expecting to land in a Wild West-style landscape, which seems to me particularly well suited for a conference on US foreign policy on Afghanistan. 'Foreign policy as a complex...

How can foreign policy today benefit from complexity sciences?

The blog ‘Current Global Affairs’ provides a window for reflection on news events, topical issues and developments. The blog focuses on the wider implications of current affairs, beyond the immediate impact of events as-they-unfold. Would you like...

Defining ‘fragile states’ is difficult – something well documented by Lars Engberg-Pedersen in his article 'Context and caution' – and yet there is a way of navigating these murky waters.

What do countries like Zimbabwe, Liberia and Afghanistan have in common? The answer is that they are all considered ‘fragile states’. Whether they like it or not, they are said to suffer from poor state capacity or the lack of political will to ca...

So, the MDG summit is over, and all those with an interest in the outcomes will be taking stock and deciding if, on balance, the event has been a success. They’ll be scanning the outcomes document, the transcripts of speeches and news reports dili...

Although the international community has focused on how to fix fragile states, none of its standard remedies has addressed the fundamental problems. Fractured societies require a new approach, one that is more firmly rooted in indigenous capacitie...

Thea Hilhorst, professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at Wageningen University, is one of our resident bloggers.

The concept of fragile states seeks to marry development and security issues. But it has led to a variety of fragile state agendas of international donors, and a lack of consensus on priorities and strategies.

In the second part of this special report we launch the public discussion on the evaluation of the Dutch policy for Africa over the last decade. Here we bring together a selection of the views of 20 Africa specialists and development experts who c...

What can be done if the government of a fragile state or a rebel movement neglects or threatens to destroy a country’s cultural heritage? While ‘temporary’ safe havens are now accepted as a solution to the problem, many museums are refusing to ret...