CIDA has commissioned NSI to review emerging donor thinking on fragile states, review policy frameworks and programming tools used in related areas such as peacebuilding, and draw on those analyses to help it strengthen the gender dimensions of its own fragile states strategy.
In recent years the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the World Bank and bilateral agencies such as UK DFID have developed new policies for programming in “fragile states”. These contexts are the opposite of the “good performers” in the aid effectiveness discourse, namely societies in which states cannot provide even the most basic public goods such as protection from massive violence to most citizens. Donors are currently grappling with how to remain engaged in such contexts, how to ensure donor coordination while nurturing local ownership, how to support change agents without fostering further conflict. Yet donors are only beginning to consider how state fragility affects men and women differently, and how they might address gender differences and relations in their fragile states programming. The papers that NSI presented to CIDA in mid-2005 are already helping the Agency bring gender into its own strategy in this area, and may help it influence wider whole-of-government as well as OECD DAC thinking in this regard. This work is directly informed by NSI’s projects on What Kind of Peace is Possible and on the Responsibility to Protect in Africa.
To read project reports, please see:
Fragile States, Gender Equality and Aid Effectiveness: A Review of Donor Perspectives By Stephen Baranyi and Kristiana Powell (August 11, 2005)
Bringing Gender Back into Canada’s Engagement in Fragile States: Options for CIDA in a Whole-of-Government Approach By Stephen Baranyi and Kristiana Powell (August 11, 2005)
