The Human Security in Fragile States academy is a collaboration of academic, governmental and non-governmental actors. Funding organizations include the Peacebuilding and Stabilization Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affaris, CORDAID, ICCO, Netherlands Red Cross (NRC), OxfamNovib and ZOA refugee care. We are exploring processes of social and economic change as they actually take place in fragile spaces. By fragile space we mean locations where formal government is contested, where people experience livelihood insecurity and where people must negotiate multiple, fragmentary and competing institutions to secure their livelihoods.

Our aim is to better understand the processes of socio-economic recovery and the roles of formal and informal institutions in conditions of state fragility. We are interested in the intersections of people’s livelihood strategies, institutions, and interventions. Our focus is a response to failures to define ‘the problem’ to be addressed in a range of contexts with a variety of labels such as states in chronic conflict, post conflict recovery, transitional states, collapsed states. A point of departure for our work is that it is more important to recognise and come to terms with the prevailing uncertainty that these myriad labels suggest than to try to find yet another structure to define these varied but related constructs/contexts. ‘Fragility’ is associated with flux, but there is little consensus about where change is headed and what should be done by whom. At the same time, there is consensus that something must be done.

This combination of uncertainty and ambiguity with a commitment to act is the challenge that the IS Academy seeks to explore.