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Afghanistan is a deeply fragile and conflict affected state. It has been in almost constant conflict for over 35 years since the Soviet invasion of 1979. Today the country is at a crossroads in its development with economic growth down sharply and poverty incidence stubbornly high. Afghanistan faces tremendous development challenges. Gross domestic product (GDP) per-capita is among the lowest in the world, poverty is deep and widespread, and social indicators are still at very low levels. The new government has declared its commitment to address Afghanistan’s development challenges, through its paper realizing self-reliance: commitments to reforms and renewed partnership presented at the London conference in December 2014. The purpose of this systematic country diagnostic (SCD) is to provide an evidence-based diagnostic within an objective framework to help in the identification of development priorities. Countries in conflict often face rapidly evolving circumstances and flexibility to adjust quickly is a necessity. The SCD is thus intended to set forth a broad and flexible framework for thinking about choices, prioritization, and sequencing.

This assessment concludes that individual nation as well as regional and transnational organizations now have severely limited to nonexistent capacities to effectively respond to growing threat levels. It proposes a networked intelligence-led strategy at national, regional, and transnational levels to more effectively control, reduce, and, more importantly, prevent the wholesale slaughter into extinction of the African elephant population within the next decade. It concludes by outlining the requirements for designing and implementing a long-term sustainable elephant crime intelligence system, including the required governance arrangements, and proposes the roles and functions that key organizations could play at the national, regional, and transnational levels. Currently, a robust intelligence system addressing elephant poaching and illegal trade of ivory at all phases within the intelligence process is either nonexistent or seriously limited in capacity (the key phases in the intelligence process are planning and direction; collection; evaluation; collation; analysis; reporting/dissemination/action). Therefore, the project examines the need for designing and implementing a long-term sustainable elephant crime intelligence system and governance model as well as assessing the roles and functions that key organizations could play at the national, regional, and international levels within such an intelligence system and accompanying governance model.

Trafficking is an emerging concern in West Africa that is gaining increasing attention from the international community. This paper examines the relationship between trafficking and fragility in the region through a meta-analysis of existing knowledge and data on the subject. Given the scope of this paper, we will not attempt to provide any primary empirical or qualitative analysis, but instead focus on offering a comprehensive, unbiased overview of the recent policy and academic literature on the subject, which we hope will assist development practitioners working in the region and help the World Bank identify possible programmatic responses. The authors start this paper by defining trafficking to frame our analysis, and then provide an overview of the trafficking economy across the region. Next, authors outline the potential channels between trafficking and fragility, discussing the actors involved (organized criminal groups, rebels, local or national level politicians, the military, and civilians) and their relevance to specific countries. Finally, the authors present our suggestions on possible policy and programmatic responses, based on identifying both regional and external dimensions to the problems.

The community of development partners in the Republic of Moldova would be honored to engage in the development policy dialogue with the new Government. This briefing book from development partners is offered as a first step in such a dialogue and is solely intended to assist the new Government by providing development partners views and proposals that it can use to the extent it considers useful and relevant. These recommendations are based on Moldova s existing policy orientations as set out in the National Development Strategy Moldova 2020, its international obligations, and the Association Agreement (AA) with the European Union (EU). Moldova made a formal commitment to accelerate the country s development by making it capital-intensive, sustainable and knowledge-driven. With a strategic framework outlining Moldova s development path in place, it is now critical to accelerate implementation of the reforms including those set out in the Association Agenda to move closer to the EU. Moldova faces significant risks in the financial sector, which should be addressed as a matter of urgency. A well-regulated and reliable banking sector is fundamental to business, people and international investors. At the same time a robust system of public financial management should be in place to ensure transparency and accountability of public finances. Moldova should develop a competitive business environment attractive to new investment. Moldova should also take advantage of new trading opportunities through effective implementation of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA).

A key driver of Liberia's re-emergence from utter destruction, between 2004 and 2008, was the willingness of international actors to accept the responsibility and risks associated with stabilization. This was accomplished by confronting these risks directly, even at the cost of temporarily filling institutional voids and sharing sovereignty with the Liberian transitional authorities. The main international diplomatic representations and aid agencies on the ground came to accept from their varying perspectives that peace in Liberia was fragile and that the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement (ACPA) of September 2003 was only the beginning of a protracted stabilization effort. The domestic market for consultants and goods did not exist, requiring the World Bank to innovate with new modes of delivering assistance. Thus, peace consolidation compelled international partners to simultaneously (i) prevent full state capture by corrupt elites in advance of elections and (ii) secure a peace dividend to vulnerable groups which could most directly threaten peace (young ex-combatants and refugees). Building on a solid UN-World Bank partnership, the international community found the internal consensus to address each of the two complementary peace consolidation challenges, adopting two highly innovative instruments: (i) an anti-corruption scheme labeled Governance and Economic Management Assistance Program (GEMAP), involving such robust measures as expatriate co-signing authority, and (ii) a short-term employment-generation scheme now known as roads-with- United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), centered on a rare direct collaboration between the Bank and the engineering units of the UN's military peacekeeping force on the ground. This paper examines these two instruments more closely, in their successes and failures as well as from the perspective of temporary shared sovereignty and co-production.

This paper examines the relationship between narcotics trafficking and violence in Central America. The first part of the paper addresses particular questions posed for the 2011 World Development Report and examines several competing hypothesis on the drivers of crime in Central America. A key finding is that areas exposed to intense narcotics trafficking in Central America suffer from higher homicide rates. Drug trafficking has corrupted state institutions, which have been overwhelmed by the resources deployed by trafficking organizations. The second part of the paper reviews the reasons drug trafficking and anti trafficking enforcement are associated with violence in general and consider policy options.

Strengthening the rule of law is widely regarded among traditional donors, multilateral institutions, and a growing number of middle income and fragile states as a necessary precondition for sustainable peace, poverty alleviation, and development. Crime and violence deter investment and lower employment, undermine social institutions, and divert resources through direct and indirect costs, all of which hinder development. It is likely to disproportionately affect poor and marginalized populations by limiting access to basic services. The formal criminal justice system is seen in many environments as failing to deliver justice. Most states experiencing fragility do not have the capacity to effectively prevent crime, enforce laws, or peacefully resolve disputes across the whole of their territories. There is another powerful deterrent for communities to seek redress through state criminal justice institutions: they are frequently a primary instrument for the government and elites to maintain power and control through the perpetration of injustice. The informal system, however, is alone insufficient to handle the pressing justice requirements of fragile states, not least for preventing and responding to inter-communal conflict, to serious organized and cross-border crime, and to public corruption and other 'white collar' crime.

This case study examines contemporary experiences of conflict in four contexts: Papua New Guinea, with particular reference to the island of Bougainville and the Highlands region; Solomon Islands; and Vanuatu. We find common themes in these experiences, despite the regions famous sociolinguistic diversity, fragmented geography and varied experience of globalization. Melanesia offers distinctive lessons about how conflict may be understood, promoted and avoided. The paper is organized in two broad parts. The first part is contextual. It provides a brief account of conflict and violence in social life before and after colonization. It then tracks, largely chronologically, through the local, national and transnational dimensions of contemporary conflict, how it was avoided, how it has changed, and how it has been managed in different contexts. Particular attention is given to global and regional influences, and to how governments, local people, and external security, development and commercial actors, have worked to mitigate and, at times, exacerbate conflict. The second part of the case study is more analytical. It steps back from the particulars to address themes and propositions in the overall conceptual framing of World Development Report (WDR) 2011 about the nature of conflict, and the underlying stresses and interests that may render it more likely. Part two draws lessons from the histories and contexts discussed in part one. The report organizes these around three themes that reflect views shared with us by people during consultations. The first highlights the need to recognize conflict as an inherent part of social change and thus the need to distinguish between socially generative social contest, and forms of conflict that are corrosive and destructive. The second examines how the ways people 'see' and understand the world directly shapes systems of regulation and 'the rules of the game' and thus directly affect responses to conflict. The third theme argues that capable and legitimate institutions to regulate social contest requires not just capable state institutions, but as much, relationships with local and international agents and organizations operating below and above the state.

This paper focuses on recent theoretical developments in political economy and what role they might play in explaining and reforming individual country and global distortions in food and agricultural markets. Four groups of forces are isolated: political governance structures emphasizing the role of democratic mechanisms; the design of polycentric structures for assigned governmental authority for setting policy instruments; market structure and other socioeconomic characteristics; and the role of sector mobility and asset diversification. Each of these forces are distilled and data sources are reviewed that will allow econometric specifications that have both explanatory and policy reform implications.

International audience; The debate over application of the death penalty for economic crimes is complicated by political issues surrounding its use against corrupt officials.