 Now we have time for questions and answers, and I would kindly ask you to introduce yourself before asking a question, and also mention your affiliation, and probably also to whom are you addressing your question primarily to. Yes, so questions, please. Yes. Thank you. I work for, my name is Jorge Rivera, and I work for the International Dialogue and Peace Building and State Building, which is actually hosted at the OECD, within the same team that publishes the States of Fragility report. So I guess you know where my question is going. So it's interesting how we define fragility, and as a Latin American, you know, we're kind of allergic to this terminology, and I found it quite interesting to be working now on how the OECD defines and tries to rank countries or assess their, you know, current fragility. And it's changed in the past two years towards a model that tries to define it as a multi-dimensional sort of issue, covering the political, social, economic, environmental, and security dimensions. And so my question to you is, in terms of ranking countries, what do you see as the value added of this exercise? Are you familiar with the OECD model? And what are your views on this approach? And just in terms of understanding fragility as a, you know, as you can get wars, but, you know, it doesn't really desegregate sort of whether fragility can affect all sorts of countries or whether we should just focus on those labeled fragile. So I guess my last question in that sense is, what do you think of this marketplace with definitions of fragility? And what do you think its value added towards a conversation of the issues in these countries is? Thank you. Thank you. My name is Antonio da Costa. I'm currently the president ambassador to Finland, and I've been working for the president of government for almost 40 years now. Give or take some. I have questions all over. I wouldn't know how to start. I had a bunch of perplexities. Part of it is like that. The one just said, which is, if we are going to address the issue of fragility in fragile states or fragile countries, I wonder, my first question would be, once you do that and you rank these countries by fragility criteria that not so sure how do you measure, not so sure how do you measure authority or legitimacy at what level you measure authority and legitimacy. But then it's very different authority and legitimacy in the US, Finland and Canada, and I lived in Jamaica and I lived in Africa, how authority is defined in Rio de Janeiro, for once, my city, or legitimacy of authority in that case. So it's a complicated concept, authority and legitimacy. But I would like to know what's the usefulness of this. And then, again, sometimes it's not the state that's fragile. It's part of the states that's fragile. Regions are fragile. Cities are fragile. You asked the question of the red light. In Rio, I don't stop at red lights at night, usually. But I wouldn't do that when I lived in New York and South Bronx either. So, you know, it's more complicated than that. On peacekeeping, finally. But I would like to understand the usefulness of this on the peacekeeping, which is something that I have followed more closely. I think part of the problem with current peacekeeping operations is previous success, to a certain extent. And to my way of thinking, the international community actually saw the success of peacekeeping operations in certain situations, very specific situations. And then moved to pursue peacekeeping operations in other situations in which two things were not there. One's consensus in the international community, let's say, within the UN system that that peacekeeping operation was useful and purposeful and had a mandate. Complications in getting the mandate. And, as you pointed out in the Central Africa Republic, intervention by UN member states in regions where peacekeeping operations were being pursued that actually undermined the peacekeeping operations. So I think when we look at peacekeeping operations, I think we should not lose sight of this political, let's say, background of what contemporary peacekeeping operations do. And a final comment on this. For some years, I participated on and off on the peacekeeping operations in Haiti. One thing that struck me, you're right, there are operational differences, language differences, there are a number of differences, but similar to what happens to diplomats, I think. One interesting thing that I found in Haiti at least, I'm not sure you can translate that everywhere, is that military usually have a similar procedural language. They seem to think in certain categories that actually allow them to communicate more evenly than we have expected. So certain difficulties of communication, equipment, procedures, when you get to the ground, they are simpler to solve than we would expect from outside the military, let's say, institutions. But I would like comments from all on this issue. OK, thank you. And here in front of the room. Oh, was it, yeah. OK, sorry, sorry. Thank you very much. I greatly enjoyed Graciana's eight or was it nine points. And I wondered how Lisa Howard in her looking at countries had seen the key point, the just one minute I have to hear, that economic reconstruction is not development as usual. And did Lisa and Jessica come across examples where that truth was ignored? The economic reconstruction was not the same as business as usual. Thank you. And please. Rofos, FEO. The first question is, but I was already asked before, but to David on how we would use these composite indices on fragility, particularly in context where the fragility or conflicts may be very specific to certain parts of countries. So it may not say a whole lot about the capacity of the state at large to take Colombia with its civil war that's now ending or Central American countries has used gangs controlling part of the country and destabilizing development in specific parts of the country. So how would one use that in such context if you just look at the fragility of the state at large, which may be more specific to Graciana who raised the issue of gender inequality and access to resources? Well, of course, at FEO, we pay a lot of attention to that, but it's also complex. It's not just giving women access to inputs, but do they have controlled land? Can they access credits? But also, and maybe that's interesting in conflict situation, is what information do they have to, for instance, know whether it's better to move out of the conflict zone or to stay put where they are. And it has enormous implications for food security. So what we found, for instance, with a social communication program in the DRC was that women and their families would be much better off to stay put in their areas rather than trying to move away from the conflict zone. And the way we helped them is just putting a social communication program where they could be in contact with each other to assess the situation and to see how they would decide on their situation. Of course, if they abandon the land and the household, that makes a huge difference. So that's something that needs to be assessed on a case by case basis. And then finally, and maybe that the whole panel has a view on that, so the FVO, we're looking at the nexus between the conflict and how conflict affects food security, but how food security could actually be, improve food security to be a source of peace building moving forward. And then how you would act on that both in during conflict and after conflicts. My own views on that, but I would like to hear a panel on that point. OK, thank you. Let's start with Graziana and move from left to right. Thank you. Thank you very much. First, as I said, I don't like this idea of fragility where you include conflict inside the fragility definition. I think in terms of policymaking, fragility outside of conflict is development as usual. I mean, they start from a lower base, but development applies there. What I'm arguing is that the conflict, the risk of falling back into conflict is so high that policymaking in conflict countries makes it completely different from development as usual, in part because it's development. There are countries at very low levels of development, so these countries have the normal social development challenges of any country at low levels of development. But in addition, they have to deal with rebuilding their economies. They have to reintegrate former combatants into productive activities to ensure that they do. And this is extremely, extremely expensive proposition. So in addition to the normal socioeconomic challenges, they have all these other challenges of peace consolidation and national reconciliation. So this is my answer to the issue of fragility. To the issue that you raise on peacekeeping operations, I want to, she will answer you specifically, but I want to mention something that Lisa mentioned earlier. And she mentioned as an example of the Central African Republic, she said, oh, we want to have UNDP as deputy SRSG. And this is something I'm always criticizing. Why? Because of the policymaking priorities. The mandate of UNDP is a mandate for development. So they are going to focus on the human development goals and they will focus. I mean, their priority in terms of budgetary allocations, whatever money they get, they will put it first for the development goals and for poverty and all that. And those are not the priorities I want to see in the post-conflict period. So I have a serious problem with that. I think the UN should have integrated operations, but they have to have somebody advising, as I was in Kosovo, advising Kushner as a special representative. But somebody who could deal with reconstruction outside the development framework of UNDP. So for me, this is the key. And then I come to Rich's question. And the first case of that was El Salvador. But then in this book that it's coming out in February next year, I have a whole chapter with evidence on that. The first case was El Salvador. So what happened in El Salvador was the UN spent three years negotiating this peace process. They were, it's very interesting because that's when I came into the cabinet of the Secretary General at the end of December, 1991, before Perez de Queixar left, they signaled this peace agreement between the FMLN and the government of El Salvador. This was December 31st at midnight. Six days later, the IMF and the government, six days later, ignoring completely the peace process, they signed an economic program for the next two years in which they didn't contemplate any budgetary allocation to the peace process. And they said, well, in October, this was January, in October, we are going to revise to see how is it going. Okay, it wasn't only the fault of the IMF, it's that the UN did not have economic advisors and they didn't even think of the financial implications of implementing the peace agreement. So they never called the IMF and said, look, we are going to have a few financing needs to finance these peace-related projects. So what happened was that a few months later, the FMLN, there was a very complicated calendar where the FMLN was going to do such a thing that we are going to demobilize in five churches and the government was going to start the Arms for Land program and other programs, blah, blah. But they never thought of thinking, where on earth are we going to get the resources to finance all these? So when the FMLN was going to have the second tranche demobilization, they decided that they are not going to do it and they were ready to go back to war. So after all this very painful process, they were ready to go back because the government could not start the programs. Thank you, Lise. No, there we go, on. Graciana, I remember one of your most beautiful analogies from one of your pieces on El Salvador where you likened El Salvador to a patient on an operating table with a curtain down the middle of the patient and you had the financial institutions on one side and the UN on the other side, both operating on the patient but with a curtain down the middle so they couldn't see what the other one was doing. It was Alvaro's idea. It was Alvaro's with DeSoto's idea. He's a brilliant man. I don't want to take credit for it. Oh, no, really? Okay. All right, I'll remember that. But I think part of the reason why UNDP is working with peacekeeping directly is for that reason, right? Because otherwise they're separate surgeons with not talking to each other and not communicating with each other. So I guess I, and especially in the Central African Republic which is not a typical post-conflict country. It is just not. It was never a war, a consolidated war. It's more a problem of, it is religious but it's more a problem of small bands of people, these neighborhood watch groups, nomads versus settled agriculture. It's more of a fluid type of conflict with many different problems that can't be easily depicted in one simple view of saying Muslims versus Christians which is the way it's often reported in the newspaper. And so in that sense, it's not a deep, enduring, violent conflict in the Central African Republic. It's much more a problem of development which I think that's why it's appropriate for UNDP to be a part of this picture but maybe you'll convince me otherwise. I just want to say one thing about peacekeeping troops which is we have this idea, there is a kind of a military culture so I think that troops can communicate with one another but it's very difficult to engage in military combat if you can't speak each other's languages. That's just one point. Another point is, and that's why peacekeepers can't do it and Haiti, they weren't engaged in combat, right? They're just patrolling and doing other things so it's fine, it's fine if they don't. My last point, there's this idea that European troops will be better at peacekeeping and given our experience in the Central African Republic there is, I haven't seen, and it's not just in the Central African Republic because it's in many different theaters, I don't see evidence that Europeans will be necessarily better at peacekeeping than peacekeepers from developed countries. Just my opinion, thanks. Thank you, Chesico. Great. Thank you for the great questions. I actually wanted to weigh in on this one which is an interesting thing because the USAID has an Office of Transition Initiatives which is supposed to immediately do post-conflict for up to two years and then they are supposed to transition over to the standard development side of the house so they kind of build in a midway between this and I don't know which of the other agencies do the same thing. Now, the problem is that Dacia and OTI don't hand off to each other. They like internally within US systems they don't play well with each other within a relatively small organization both headquartered in Washington. So that's like an internal coordination dynamic within eight dynamics. But so this idea of fragility, so I know those weren't directed towards me because we purposely avoid using the fragility idea but within ourselves, the three PIs on my project, we can't decide about whether we should be creating composite scores or not. Some of us want to and some of us think it's not appropriate. We wanted to do sub-regional within each country analysis of authority, legitimacy, effectiveness. So we have a picture at that sub-national to the national to gain some insight into the regional dynamics. What I think is interesting about your example in Rio, you know that you should, you just know that security wise you can't stop. But the fact that you think that you should to me is really important. It's how people kind of internalize the state. And in some countries, so the third of the people in the audience who didn't raise their hands, they don't have a state that they've internalized. I say it's authority that they've internalized to even think that there's a should, there's no pause about stopping. And we think that's a really important dynamic of authority versus legitimacy. And we want to be able to speak about those separately. Thank you. No, David. Okay. So I got two or three questions pretty much all related. I think when I do another presentation like this, what I'll do is begin with my results and end with the index because typically what people do is they glom on to the deficiencies in a single rank index and neglect the results, which we're basically hoping that you would find compelling and would stimulate some discussion. I mean, the fragility trap is a problem. Why are we fixated on single rank indices when the evidence that we derived from the use of time series single rank indices shows that there's a significant problem that's not going away. Now, with respect to the OECD, there was a time in which we were feeding into the NCAF and they were using our data as a source of information to rank countries. That stopped a few years ago and I found that the OECD is essentially emulating our work in trying to disaggregate state fragility and claiming it to be unique and novel and new. And I've written a terse letter to the OECD basically just telling them that far from being unique and new, it is essentially a replication of work that already exists, including our own. And so I think when you have a major organization like the OECD just now coming to grips with the need to diversify our understandings of fragility, I think that's problematic, speaks to a basic unwillingness to learn about how to unwrap fragility. There's institutional lag between understanding the nature of the problem and responding to it. I'd say up to 10 years, which is how long our project has been in existence, long before the Fund for Peace introduced its fragility index. Now with respect to the utility of a single-rank index, I mean, obviously if you don't think it has utility, then you're not the right person to be using it. The end user determines what is of value to them and they pay for that service for you to provide a particular kind of data source in a way in which you can use that information. It does have strategic value. It does highlight countries at risk at a single glance. Some strategic decision makers find that of great value. Of course, you want to disaggregate that to determine operational relevance and how you might fit in and responding to these particular problems within a particular fragile state. Of course, a single-rank index is not gonna give you the nuance you need to understand sub-regional dimensions of conflict and fragility. Of course it's not. But why should methodology be the sole determinant of how we should evaluate a particular project? It means you look elsewhere for your kinds of information to complement that overarching strategic assessment. That's precisely what we did on behalf of the European Union which said we're interested in sub-national conflict, Kosovo, you name it, regions within Eastern Europe, parts of South, South, South-Sahara Africa which are technically not part of any particular country but overlap between them. You create a new methodology for evaluating fragility but you derive some coherence between that methodology which is essentially dynamic or event-driven database analysis as well as stakeholder analysis with the structural database to identify key drivers of fragility. There should be continuity between the three main sources of information that you developed. So let's not kid ourselves, single-rank index isn't gonna give you a lot of information but it's I think a necessary preliminary step without which we would not be able to amass that time series analysis in order to determine whether or not there's a fragility trap out there. One year, one offs done once a year, limited perhaps utility for certain individuals. You do that over 15 years, you see a significant problem that is arising that it's not going away, namely the fragility trap. The World Bank so far has commented on the fragility trap but it's just hypothetical. We now have clear evidence that such a beast exists and it isn't equivalent to conflict-affected states nor is it necessarily affecting those states that are deeply mired in poverty, it's a combination of factors. If you wanna know more about how we disaggregate that and provide nuance and detail, yeah, profile a country. Let's go to town and detail that country but have some continuity and coherence between the overarching structural features of that country and the sub-national elements that contribute to that country's fragility. Okay, so with David's final comments, we need to close this panel. I would invite the audience to join me in giving the final applause to our great panel.