Unlocking the potential of the Global Fragility Act: A path forward

The 2019 Global Fragility Act (GFA) and the resulting U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability (SPCPS) are textbook models for how external experts can positively work with policymakers to shape U.S. legislation and strategy. But they also demonstrate that even the best designed laws and strategies will struggle to confront entrenched bureaucratic realities and ways of doing business.

Over the past five years, the GFA and SPCPS, which seek to elevate conflict prevention and enable a more effective, whole-of-government approach to fragile and conflict-affected countries, have catalyzed some noteworthy improvements to U.S. government coordination and foreign assistance in a handful of pilot countries. But, despite the GFA being designed as a whole-of-government effort, it is primarily operating as a foreign assistance initiative, is struggling to integrate diplomatic and defense tools, and lacks a pathway for improving U.S. efforts outside the pilot countries. Further, it lacks the operational resources needed to “do business differently” and is struggling to operationalize key GFA principles like local leadership, learning, and adaptation. Most importantly, U.S. efforts under the GFA lack influence over U.S. foreign policy decisions toward the pilot countries and the buy-in from U.S. policymakers that is essential for effective conflict prevention and stabilization.

The goals behind the GFA and SPCPS have only become more important since 2019, as the re-emergence of major power competition and instability in the international order have fueled a surge in violence and conflict globally. As the GFA nears its five-year anniversary later this year and the administration prepares its first congressional report, both the administration and Congress have an opportunity to address the bureaucratic, resource, and authority constraints that have impeded the initiative.

The origins of the GFA and SPCPS

The GFA was born out of years of civil society efforts to compile lessons from U.S. interventions in fragile and conflict-affected countries. A few interested members of Congress embraced these efforts and, in fiscal year 2017 Appropriations Act, directed a study that provided specific recommendations for a new fragile states initiative. A network of civil society advocates and congressional staff collaborated to translate some of these recommendations into the GFA, enacted in December 2019. At that point, a cohort of U.S. government experts from the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, Department of Defense, and National Security Council began working together to develop a plan for operationalizing the goals of the GFA, including developing processes to improve coordination across U.S. government agencies, integrate learning and adaptation into all U.S. interventions, adopt long-term planning, and strengthen collaboration with local partners and donors. These efforts were codified in the SPCPS, published in December 2020. Since then, that cohort—now organized into a GFA secretariat—has worked with officials in nine pilot countries to implement the initiative and has continued to consult with many of the original civil society advocates and congressional staff that contributed to the legislation.¹

Successes and shortcomings of the GFA and SPCPS

In our recent paper, “Renewing momentum on the Global Fragility Act,” we describe how the GFA and SPCPS have contributed to improvements in how the U.S. operates in the pilot countries. This includes strengthening coordination both within the U.S. government and with other partners, a prime model of which is an innovative project, the Coastal States Stability Mechanism in Coastal West Africa.

However, the GFA’s ability to prevent conflict is constrained because it lacks the authority, resources, and senior policymaker attention necessary to mobilize diplomatic and security tools or to influence U.S. foreign policy in the pilot countries. As Allison Minor demonstrates in a working paper, the U.S. ability to prevent conflict in other countries often depends on foreign policy decisions it makes in pivotal moments, not just on foreign assistance projects.

Further, officials are struggling to overcome bureaucratic impediments to transparency and collaboration with other donors and to engage local leadership in countries where government capacity and commitment to reform is extremely weak—conditions that characterize most fragile states. It also is not clear that the administration’s attempts to apply monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) techniques typically used for foreign assistance will effectively capture the impact of U.S. government interventions across the pilot countries or provide the kind of real-time, strategic information needed to help policymakers adopt a more adaptive and responsive posture in the pilot countries. Finally, the administration has not yet identified a plan for expanding the impact of the GFA beyond the nine pilot countries, including any plans for selecting future priority countries or addressing systemic impediments to U.S. operations in fragile countries, as described in the SPCPS.

How to renew momentum on the GFA and SPCPS

The work of experts, officials, and congressional staffers over the past several years has established a strong foundation for improving U.S. efforts in fragile states. To continue to build on this foundation and realize the ambitions articulated in the GFA and SPCPS, the administration and Congress must use the required March 2025 congressional report on the GFA to strengthen the initiative’s authorities and resources, make some course corrections, and renew momentum. We provide more detail on what this should entail in our full paper, but critical areas for action include:

1. Recommit to the core objectives of the GFA as a whole-of-government initiative to improve the U.S. approach to fragility globally:
   1. Develop a plan for expanding the impact of the GFA beyond the pilot countries.
   2. Get serious about integrating diplomatic and defense tools.
   3. Strengthen senior policymaker buy-in.
2. Provide the resources necessary to “do business differently,” including operational resources and authorities for staff and sufficient foreign assistance resources.
3. Improve operationalization of key GFA principles, including:
   1. Determine how to operate when local leadership is weak.
   2. Move beyond traditional donor coordination to donor collaboration.
   3. Translate visionary goals into credible objectives.
   4. Develop learning processes that can inform near-term policymaking.
   5. Strengthen tools for private sector partnership.