Donors use the term ‘fragile’ for states with a high degree of political or institutional instability or incapacity, where conventional aid-effectiveness principles are most challenging to apply.  There is no official definition of a fragile states.  The World Bank uses the term for countries with a low score on the IDA Resource Allocation Index (formerly CPIA score).  Donors like DFID use a more subjective analysis, drawing on sources such as the Failed States Index published by the Fund for Peace.

The Paris Declaration contains a short section on fragile states.  It states that, while the guiding principles of aid effectiveness apply, they need to be adapted to take account of weak ownership and capacity, and to meet the immediate needs of service delivery.  It recommends that donors harmonise their activities with each other, through joint needs assessments and strategies, while involving national counterparts as much as possible through instruments such as Transitional Results Matrices. 

This has been supplemented by a set of Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States, which have been piloted and refined over the last couple of years.  While there is clearly a need for some kind of guiding principles in fragile states, there is continuing debate in the literature about how far the Paris Declaration paradigm is applicable.