Eighteen countries recognised as fragile states and clustering around the high end of the Failed States Index convene under the name ‘g7plus’, with the motto ‘Goodbye conflict, welcome development’. They all struggle with poverty, instability and the threat of violent conflict, and in most cases with extensive displacement now or in the recent past. Few of them are expected to meet any of the Millennium Development Goals.[1]

g7+ is a “country-owned and country-led mechanism to monitor, report and draw attention to the particular challenges faced by fragile states”. The group made a collective approach to the international community on the sidelines of the OECD's fourth High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan in 2011 and has since both continued to meet as a group and to meet with the international community about the members’ needs and circumstances. Their stance is that they should take leadership and express a strong, long-term vision to assist their development partners, the donors, in designing their assistance to fragile states. The ‘New Deal for engagement in fragile states’ has become the framework for this engagement.[2]

Effective assistance to fragile states to support them to become less fragile should lead to opportunities to reduce internal displacement, allow refugees to return and settle issues of rights, in a virtuous circle hopefully breaking the cycle of displacement as cause and symptom of fragility.