A Framework for Analyzing Resilience in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations

Fragile and conflict-affected states are home to approximately 1.5 billion of the world’s poorest people. In addition to security issues, these countries face the risk of economic, environmental, political, and social shocks and stressors. In an effort to better understand these risks and to be better able to respond to them, significant attention has been placed on the concept of resilience. The following framework analyzes resilience in terms of institutions, resources, and adaptive facilitators and has been developed for the office of Conflict Management and Mitigation at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a tool for analyzing resilience in fragile and conflict-afflicted situations. This assessment should help practitioners design programs that strengthen institutions, resources and adaptive facilitators in order to make communities more able to mitigate, adapt to and recover from shocks and stressors - to become more resilient.