Preventing failed, fragile states

Source: Embassy Magazine
Date: April 21, 2010

By David Carment, Yiagadeesen Samy

As we all know, failed and fragile states have moved to the top of the policy “leaderboard” in recent years.

A number of resource-intensive initiatives have been launched to confront the various problems these states pose, and though there are “only” 30 to 40 fragile states in the world, they do attract a fair amount—some might say a disproportionate amount—of our attention in terms of our time, energy and money.

But what exactly are the problems that make these countries uniquely fragile and so difficult to fix?

Read more ….