Do Poverty Reduction Strategies Work in Fragile States? Stocktaking and Lessons Learned

Among the most aid-dependent and heavily indebted countries, fragile states constitute a sub-group of the world’s poorest and most challenging countries. An emerging international agenda calls for attention to state-building in the PRS of fragile states, along with better coordination within and among donor countries. However, in view of the extremely poor capacity in such countries, the question arises whether they are capable to prepare and effectively implement PRSs. The session will present a recent stocktaking of PRS in fragile states to frame the issues, followed by comments from practitioners with first-hand experience in fragile states.

Presenter: Nora Dudwick

Chair: Louise Cord

Discussants: 

• Luigi Giovine, AFTCS, served nearly four years as country manager for Liberia.  He is working to strengthen Bank collaboration with the UN system, the AU, and other regional agencies, drawing on field experience as a peacekeeper in Somalia (UNOSOM II, 1993) and his political science background.
•  Greg Ellis, on secondment to OPCS, Fragile and Conflict-affected Countries Group; previously worked on government reform in East Asia, including East Timor and the Solomon Islands.

Materials:

• PRS in Fragile States: A Stocktaking of What We Know, by Nora Dudwick (41kb PPT)
• PREM Note No. 127: A Stocktaking of PRSPs in Fragile States, by Nora Dudwick and Adam Nelsson (122kb PDF)
• Discussion Notes (48kb PDF)

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