Fragile Process: The record of the millennium development goals in states affected by conflict, fragility, and crisis

This report consists of several elements: First, it discusses the process of determining how countries are designated as being affected by conflict, fragility, or crisis, and the lack of agreement surrounding that process. It analyzes the cohort of conflict-affected and fragile states during the 2000–2015 period with an eye to exploring how the world tracks such countries and which of these countries made better or worse progress on the original MDGs.

Second, the report compares the progress of these different countries against data on a variety of other factors—such as socioeconomic conditions, corruption levels, trade volumes, resource flows, type of governance, and other data—to explore if certain broad conditions were more or less correlated with relative progress on the MDGs.

Third, to supplement this data-driven analysis of the MDGs in fragile states, the report’s authors develop several practical case studies from countries that were relatively high performers on the goals to see if there are particular interventions, programs, or approaches that are effective in promoting development advances in settings of conflict and fragility.

Lastly, the report advances a series of policy recommendations based on the authors’ findings to help shape the ongoing negotiations about the SDGs with the aim of making them more sensitive to the needs, capacities, and realities of fragile and conflict-affected states.