Fragility and Resilience

IsDB has traditionally attached great importance to assisting member countries (MCs) in addressing fragility and conflict and building resilience – a commitment that has been renewed through formulating a coherent and strategic policy to address the challenges of fragility, conflict and the approach to strengthening resilience capacities.

Overview

At the Islamic Development Bank, we believe that fragility and violent conflict are critical development impediments facing the majority of IsDB member countries. Sixty percent of conflicts across the world take place in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries, which are also prone to multi-dimensional fragility, with grave human costs in terms of displacement internally and cross borders. Several IsDB member countries (MCs) face a range of challenges including weak institutions, low governance capacity, socio-economic disruptions, insecurity, and forced displacement. In 2019, there were around 79 million people forcibly displaced in the world whereas eight of the top twelve refugee-hosting countries in the world are MCs.

Three key considerations:

  1. The OECD State of Fragility Report identifies 58 countries experiencing a fragile situation, out of which 29 are IsDB -MCs.
  2. Middle-income countries are increasingly affected by pockets of fragility, sub-national fragility or violent conflicts caused by governance issues which all negatively impedes inclusive socio-economic development.
  3. COVID-19 adds additional challenges to MCs experiencing fragility, protracted conflict, forced displacement and recurrent natural disasters; these MCs face aggravated challenges of limited access to basic health service, increasing economic vulnerabilities, loss of livelihoods and jobs, food insecurity, competition over resources, marginalization, and political instability which could exacerbate fragile systems any ongoing conflict

Guiding Principles

Six guiding principles provide a foundation for the “Fragility and Resilience Policy”: Country Ownership, Selectivity, Adaptability, Solidarity, Context and Conflict Sensitivity, and Partnerships.

IsDB has also formulated the Operational Strategy of the Fragility and Resilience Policy. The strategy will elaborate on the analytical tools, priority areas, programming, and financing instruments relevant to each phase of addressing fragility and building resilience. 

IsDB Framework for Intervention 

In order to address challenges facing member countries affected by fragility/conflict and to realign the 10-year strategy and President's 5-Year Program (P5P) promoting inclusive economic and social development for FCAS in MCs, the IsDB has developed its own framework for intervention focusing on the dual challenge of addressing fragility, conflict and building resilience. This IsDB first ever “Fragility and Resilience Policy” aims at setting standards and strategic direction to building resilience, strengthen institutions, and contributing to social cohesion and sustainable development in MCs.

The Policy is centered around four main pillars namely:

  1. Investing in prevention entails the use of preventive actions addressing the root causes of fragility and the risk of social disturbance, hence accenting inclusiveness
  2. Transitioning relief to development  is about bridging humanitarian assistance and development policies and formulating investments and development operations aimed at the mitigation of the impacts of conflict and fragility as an important second transitional step
  3. Supporting recovery and resilience focuses on the reconstruction and recovery of economic, human, social, and physical capital of the country and on supporting resilience practices in the aftermath of conflict or a deep fragile situation
  4. Mobilizing resources for resilience underlines the need of providing key financing mechanisms to enable the implementation of the FRP. 

Increasing Knowledge and Capacity Building

In line with the awareness track of the President 5-Years Program which calls for the Bank to increase and share knowledge to find innovative solutions to support MCs to manage risks, shocks, stresses and pressures posed by human-made and natural disasters, the  Bank has developed and launched its first annual flagship “Resilience Report: Understanding, Investing & Programming for Resilience,” which is going to be a regular publication of the Bank focusing on the resilience of IsDB Member Countries (MCs). The Report helps stakeholders to understand resilience better, make smart investments in what works, and ensure the efficient programming of those interventions. The Report highlights nine case studies, including Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Somalia, and Nigeria. The case studies assess critical factors of building resilience based on five dimensions including (i) economic pressures, (ii) environmental and natural disasters, (iii) human security challenges, (iv) institutional and infrastructural capacity, and (v) forced migration, refugees and internally displaced people (IDP). The report gives practical recommendations, which will assist the IsDB and its MCs to design policies, strategies, and programs for building resilience. The report will also contribute to the country engagements, programs and projects. The recommendations and findings of the report are very useful for the Global Value Chain Development Programs and MCPS.

In efforts to strengthen the internal IsDB institutional capacity to systematically engage with fragility and conflict affected MCs, the Bank has introduced number of important tools including Fragility and Resilience Assessment to ensure that programs and projects are conflict and fragility sensitive. 

Partnerships and Building Alliance

Drawing on the experiences and challenges faced by other MDBs, the IsDB policy accents a partnership approach especially in focusing on prevention and bridging the important transition between relief and development as well as supporting recovery and resilience. Partnerships are key to maximizing the efficiency of resource use and building synergies between stakeholders to avoid duplication of efforts.

The partnership is about coordinated action to share risks and burdens in fragile situations. Approaches to partnership in fragile situations are designed to cohesively boost and legitimize institutions. IsDB aims to find synergies with partners to achieve shared goals, in the spirit of the 2030 Agenda and current global initiatives. In addition, IsDB’s global practices are empowered to organize forums to strengthen public and private knowledge-sharing and partnerships.

From the perspective of resilience, multi-stakeholder collaboration at all levels is so essential. It takes a dynamic system of actors including government, civil society, private sector, and community leadership working both together and separately at different levels and dimensions for prevention and response to pressures and shocks of fragility. When external interventions do not synergize with local systems, they are less effective, and can even disrupt those existing systems and mechanisms. Interventions should be done in cooperation and partnership with relevant government ministries and, where possible, buy-in, ownership, and sustainability. 

IsDB Interventions 

IsDB is actively engaged in various ways in building resilience and mitigating the adverse effects of fragility and conflict. Since its inception, the IsDB Group has provided over US$ 2.6 billion to tackle the challenges of fragility and conflict in 40 MCs and Muslim communities in 19 non-MCs. IsDB's interventions include:

  • Relief assistance
  • Water
  • Sanitation
  • Education
  • Health

These were carried out through Trust Funds, Fael Khair Program, Special Operations and the Islamic Solidary Fund for Development (ISFD). In addition, the Bank supported programs that build resilience through job creation and skills development. Implemented programs and projects include 

The Bank has been active to mainstream fragility and conflict sensitivity lens and preventive approaches in its Member Country Partnership Strategies (MCPS), Value Chain Development programs and projects to address the drivers of fragility and conflict.

The IsDB has been supporting the refugees and hosting communities through SMEs Programs to enable Refugees/IDPs to generate their livelihoods and Strengthen social cohesion between refugees/IDPs and host communities. The most successful programs and projects supporting fragile and conflict affected member countries include Business Resilience Value Added Enterprise (BRAVE), Deprived families Economic Empowerment Program (DEEP) for Palestine, skills development and smart education for over 700,000 refugees, IDPs and hosting communities in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey; and Tadamon CSO Pandemic Response Accelerator Program supporting over 6 million most vulnerable and hard-to-reach population in 16 MCs affected by fragility and conflict to contain and respond to the negative impact of the COVID-19. 

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