Phase 4: ICA in crisis and fragile contexts

Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the fourth phase of the e­Discussion on Institutional and Context Analysis (ICA). Thank you for your contributions so far and the very interesting discussions touching on such a broad range of issues, such as the Institutional and Context Analysis and energy, environment, political will and transitions and the Arab spring. In this fourth and final week of the e­Discussion on ICA, we will focus on fragile and conflict countries, seeing how the ICA approach can be adapted and used in such challenging environments.

State fragility is now recognized as one of the world’s paramount development challenges. People living in fragile states – an estimated 1.5 billion worldwide – are twice as likely to be undernourished, more than three times as likely to be unable to send their children to school, and twice as likely to see their children die before age five, compared to people living in other developing countries. Based on this recognition, bilateral and multilateral donors are scaling up their aid to fragile and crisis­ affected countries: today, about 30% of all Official Development Assistance (ODA) is spent in such contexts. Along with this increase in resources, there is a shift of focus: assistance is moving away from short­term recovery projects and towards more complex, longer­term programmatic support to processes of state building and peacebuilding.