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The Post-2015 Agenda: Policy Brief #4
Fragility and conflict
in the post-2015 goals
The issues at a glance
• The Millennium Development Goals have been ineffective in contexts of conflict and fragility, causing
1.5 billion people to miss a decade of concerted international action on poverty reduction.
• Making new development goals relevant for fragile contexts will promote equity in development.
• Targeting children and youth in a fragility-sensitive goals framework will stimulate intergenerational
change.
• New targets will drive public participation and government planning across all goals.
• Though politically sensitive, a new goal promoting inclusive governance could target inclusion, justice
and peace.
Rationale
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have not
been effective in fragile contexts, causing 1.5 billion
people 1 to miss out on a decade of concerted
international action on poverty reduction. Prioritising
peacebuilding and statebuilding in a new set of
development goals is a way to reach these most
vulnerable and marginalised communities. World Vision
argues that by targeting fragile contexts, the post-2015
development goals can capture the pursuit of equity with
the same clarity that the MDGs brought to the reduction
of poverty. Targets that address inclusion, accountability
and effectiveness could be added to each of the new
goals. One further goal addressing inclusive governance
could target social inclusion, justice and peace.
Fragility and conflict embody the causes of the most
acute inequity and vulnerability; and children are
particularly vulnerable to the violence, neglect and abuse
that arises. When Brazil, India and China are set aside,
the majority of the undernourished, the impoverished
and the uneducated people and the main proportion of
infant deaths are in fragile and conflict-affected states. 2
The 2011 World Development Report captured this
situation in its declaration that no fragile or conflicted
state will achieve a single MDG.
Gaps in the MDG architecture
The MDGs were effective in raising the priority of
poverty reduction and are driving improvements in wellbeing
for women and children. However, they have not
proven effective at reaching hundreds of millions of the
world’s most vulnerable people. This is evident when
considered from the point of view of fragile and conflictaffected
contexts, which embody the two biggest failings
of the MDGs.
First, the MDGs did not mandate an equity approach:
many countries were able to claim success in reaching
targets while leaving their hardest-to-reach people no
better off. Second, for the least developed, most conflictaffected
places the goals did not prioritise the
fundamentals of peace, justice and inclusion that would
enable them to achieve the other poverty targets. As the
World Bank has noted, ‘Military-only, justice-only or
development-only solutions will falter.’ 3
Mother and children in drought-affected northern Somalia.
Amanda Jepchirchir Koech/World Vision
World Vision International Policy Brief on the Post-2015 development agenda: Number 4
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Continued fragility has compromised the capacity of
governments, communities and donors to reduce
poverty, impacting the most vulnerable people,
particularly children. Conflict-affected areas, in particular,
are host to the most egregious abuses of children’s rights,
as has been recognised in repeated resolutions of the UN
Security Council and the establishment of the Watch List
on Children and Armed Conflict. 4
The MDGs have had unprecedented success in
reaching most of the world’s poor, but in doing so they
have passed over the world’s most poor. An enhanced set
of goals must correct this, adding to the clear poverty
focus of the MDGs a new emphasis on equity.
‘Fostering development in conflict-affected
states has become the development challenge
of the 21 st century.’
– UN System Task Team on the post-2015 UN Development
Agenda (May 2012)
Consideration of fragile contexts in the post-2015 goals is
a critical pathway to achieve this.
What has happened since 2000:
Aid effectiveness
The MDGs gave rise to a growing need to measure both
the progress and the quality of development assistance.
The resulting aid effectiveness movement has been the
focus of mainstream development thinking since then,
with successive agreements that have, at least in principle,
rewritten the rules of conduct for international
development. Significant outcomes include:
• mandating much stronger coordination
(harmonisation) between donors
• giving developing states ownership of the
development agenda for a more authentic
partnership approach
• avoiding donor-established parallel systems and
policies in developing countries
• paying attention to results and accountability
• strengthening the role for civil society.
Perhaps the most radical expression of this movement
was at the 2011 Busan aid effectiveness conference, in
launching the New Deal for Fragile States. The New Deal
Fragile contexts
Fragile contexts are those where a government
cannot or will not act on its responsibility to
protect and fulfil the rights of the majority of the
population, particularly the poor. These
responsibilities include territorial control,
security, public resource management, service
delivery and livelihood support.
Fragility does not conform to state borders and
relatively stable states may encompass fragile
regions. Conversely, fragile states can contain
zones of stability. Ultimately, basic accountability
relationships between governments and citizens
in fragile contexts are weak or broken.
Many fragile states are post-conflict countries
and are at high risk of relapse to conflict and the
rise of criminal violence. Many also endure
cyclical natural disasters. Conflict, violence and
disaster have severe effects on economic
growth, and so the most affected fragile contexts
have growing levels of extreme poverty, which is
counter to the trend in most low-income
countries.
gave voice to the world’s most fragile states, home to
those who have missed out on the benefits of the MDGs
and who characteristically have little say in development
decisions affecting them.
The New Deal process enables fragile states to use an
assessment of their own fragility as the basis for
negotiating new development compacts with the donor
community. Significantly, the New Deal is built around
the ‘Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals’ (PSGs, which
are quite distinct from the MDGs):
• Legitimate Politics – Foster inclusive political
settlements and conflict resolution.
• Security – Establish and strengthen people’s
security.
• Justice – Address injustices and increase people’s
access to justice.
• Economic Foundations – Generate employment
and improve livelihoods.
• Revenues and Services – Manage revenue and
build capacity for accountable and fair service
delivery.
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Of the five PSGs, the first three target a set of
problems that are distinct from those addressed in the
MDGs. The experience of the MDGs in fragile states
suggests that it is the failure to deal with these first three
issues that has blocked progress on the poverty goals.
Universal fragility?
There is a risk that some countries, those that reject
being called fragile or those that are more stable, may
ignore any set of perceived ‘fragility goals’. This outcome
should be avoided as responding to fragility is intrinsic to
the pursuit of equity in poverty reduction. Moreover
many, possibly most, countries have elements of fragility
within their borders, where there may be entrenched
conflict, criminal violence, limited government access or
legitimacy, disenfranchised citizens, extreme economic
vulnerability and extremes of poverty. Gross abuses of
children’s rights are more prevalent where government is
weak, violence is widespread and social structures are
shattered. Progress against the MDGs has bypassed these
communities even in more successful developing
countries. If these states disregard fragility targets,
particularly for children and youth, then social, ethnic and
geographical inequality may be perpetuated into the next
generation.
The peacebuilding NGO Saferworld has published an
excellent analysis comparing the MDGs to several
existing peacebuilding frameworks. 5 This shows a clear
alignment between each of the peacebuilding frameworks
(including the New Deal) but very little crossover with
the MDGs. The analysis identifies a useful set of common
values that are broadly similar to the PSGs (legitimacy,
security, justice, livelihoods, revenues and services), but
with two significant inclusions that articulate the role of
social groups and the responsibility of the international
community:
• All social groups can participate in decisions
that affect society.
• The international community is effectively
addressing the external stresses that lead to
conflict.
The importance of these two factors is emphasised in a
new analysis of the aftermath of 15 recent civil wars. This
report found that the single most common factor in
preventing the resurgence of conflict was the inclusion of
the full range of civil actors – including former opponents
– in post-war governance. It recommends the continued
involvement of the international community through the
peace process, with the purpose of ensuring inclusion. 6
Ensuring the inclusion of all social groups in the
processes of governance is something that no country
has fully achieved. Disenfranchisement happens in myriad
ways, both overt and subtle. The effects of this may be
the most extreme in fragile contexts, but inclusive
governance is relevant for all states. The broad relevance
of inclusive governance is also a challenge to its adoption
as it challenges existing power structures.
Promoting inclusion in fragile contexts is not without
risk. Ill-informed or poorly designed civic empowerment
can result in renewed conflict or violence, directed at
children and women. This risk reinforces the need for
participation by representative civil society groups in
determining how inclusion is best approached. The New
Deal for Fragile States offers one possible approach to
this, by providing a state-sanctioned and donor-supported
forum for civil society to participate in identifying drivers
of fragility and setting appropriate goals and strategies for
their context.
Addressing conflict and fragility:
Minimalist or radical change?
For these reasons and also to preserve the clarity of the
existing goals, it is not proposed to add several new goals
to an existing MDG framework. In its first post-2015
policy brief, World Vision has argued for a set of
enhanced goals that build on the existing MDGs in order
to ‘finish the job’ of poverty reduction and reach beyond
it to assure equitable development opportunities for all. 7
One of the criticisms of the MDGs is that they
demand very little accountability of donor or recipient
governments to ensure that their investment in
development targets the MDGs. They can claim credit for
the outcome without having to track how they got there.
Building stronger accountability into each new or
enhanced goal is one way to implement equity principles
that apply equally to all countries and that can promote
inclusion across all issues. This addition could address
some of the particular concerns of fragile contexts but
would not be sufficient. World Vision suggests that
creating one specific goal on inclusive
governance would capture the most essential parts of
the peacebuilding and statebuilding agenda.
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Fragility additions to a post-2015 framework
Existing MDG Themes
Additional targets for each theme are:
• government planning, budgeting and systems
• public participation, including by children and
youth, in target setting, planning and
implementation.
Revised International Partnership Goal
Additional targets are:
• donor accountability to support recipient country
development planning
• donor accountability in assuring civil participation
• global cooperation for cross border influence.
One New Goal: Inclusive Governance
Includes targets on:
• inclusion
• justice
• peace and the elimination of violence.
This formulation differs from the approach suggested
by the UN System Task Team (UNTT), which advocates
a three-pillar structure encompassing peace and security;
sustainable human development; and rights, law and
justice. The UNTT suggestion has merit as it brings
together three sometimes competing discourses, but it
carries the risk that governments could ignore one of the
pillars as not being relevant to them. WV’s proposed
enhanced framework is a more integrated response that,
by maintaining the focus on poverty reduction for the
most vulnerable groups while emphasising equity and
inclusion, makes it harder to pick and choose.
Measurement
An enhanced set of goals will bring new challenges for
measuring progress. Beyond refined health, education and
household income indicators, a new goal frame such as
that proposed above would need to track factors such as
government budget allocations, civic empowerment and
opportunity, conflict levels, equity in access to justice and
a range of donor actions, including donor alignment to
the new framework.
Civil society has experience in a number of these new
areas, including collecting indicators disaggregated
according to age, gender and other factors. World Vision
and other organisations have developed various tools
that measure government accountability in particular, and
there is an entire discipline of peacebuilding and
statebuilding monitoring that has not been part of the
MDGs. The states, donors and civil society organisations
collaborating on the New Deal for Fragile States are
generating a set of ‘shared indicators’ to measure
progress against the Peacebuilding and Statebuilding
Goals that address many of the new components of this
proposed revised framework.
The shared indicators of the New Deal confront two
of the challenges of measuring progress on issues of
inclusion, accountability and peace. Unlike traditional
poverty measures that rely on quantifiable indicators,
progress on these new issues requires a blend
of quantitative indicators (e.g. corruption indices, arrest
rates, numbers of local conflicts resolved by peace
agreement) and qualitative ones that measure
perceptions of justice, security and accountability. Though
this is new territory for a set of global goals, established
mechanisms for collecting such information are being
considered for the New Deal’s shared indicators.
Bringing such initiatives to scale will be essential to the
success of a new set of goals. In doing this, measurement
initiatives that have been the domain of the nongovernment
sector will become increasingly in demand.
This will present two challenges: for civil society to share
ownership of these initiatives and find ways to expand
their use, and for governments and donors to avoid
losing the strong civil participation values that underpin
them. In short, measurement of the new goals will
depend on genuine and lasting collaboration among
donors, recipient countries and civil society. Such
cooperation would itself be an indicator of progress in
peacebuilding and statebuilding.
Boy attends school in an IDP camp in Herat, Afghanistan
Paul Bettings/World Vision
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Conclusion
The post-2015 goals framework is a chance to promote
equity in opportunities for development for all, most
particularly for the world’s most vulnerable children living
in fragile contexts. If they are to succeed, the new goals
need to speak clearly to the governments of the world,
to tell them that concerted action is possible and that it
will have an impact. This was part of the genius of the
original MDGs—that by naming the main obstacles to
poverty reduction and setting clear and measurable
targets for their achievement, the international aid
community was able to work together in pursuit of them,
with some success.
Similarly, by naming governance, peace, participation
and justice as the key challenges for equity in
development for those living in fragile contexts, it may be
that things that were previously thought to be beyond
the reach of international cooperation will become
another full part of the international development effort.
Difficult, but essential. ‘What we measure shapes what
we collectively strive to pursue’. 8
Bringing these elements into a new set of goals is not
revolutionary. The UN Millennium Declaration reminds
us that they have long been recognised as essential to
good development. The thinking and practice of the last
decade has equipped us to act.
World Vision’s recommendations
1. Promote responses to fragility in an
enhanced set of development goals as the
surest pathway to equity in development.
This will be achieved by:
a. creating a goal on inclusive governance
that targets inclusion, justice and peace
b. adding targets on government
planning, budgeting and systems, and
on civil participation to the successors
to the existing goals 1–7
c. adding targets on donor accountability
for civil participation and support for
government planning, and on global
cooperation on cross-border influences
to the successor to the existing goal 8.
2. Donors, governments and civil society
organisations should begin to collaborate
on shared approaches to participatory
measurement of progress against the new
goals.
© World Vision International 2012
1 World Bank, World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and
Development (April 2011).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4
http://watchlist.org/the-issue/.
5 Saferworld Briefing, ‘Approaching Post-2015 from a Peace Perspective’
(September 2012).
6
Charles T. Call, Why Peace Fails: The Causes and Prevention of Civil War
Recurrence (April 2012), Georgetown University Press, Washington DC.
7 World Vision, The Post-2015 Agenda: Policy brief #1: Reaching the
world’s most vulnerable children (November 2012), 2.
8 Joseph E. Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Report by the
Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social
Progress (2010) www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr. Quoted in the UN Thematic
Think Piece on Peace and Security.
World Vision International Policy Brief on the Post-2015 development agenda: Number 4 Page 5

CONTACTS
World Vision Lead contact on Post-2015 agenda:
Chris Derksen-Hiebert
Director, External Relations, Advocacy and Justice for Children
chris_derksen-hiebert@worldvision.ca
Post-2015 Policy Briefs series editor: Kate Laburn Peart
Director, Public Policy, Advocacy and Justice for Children
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