Over the last 10 years, around 15 per cent of the Australian aid budget was spent through two multilateral development banks (MDBs): the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank. Close to two-thirds of this was given as non-core funding (funding earmarked for a specific purpose or region). Through these contributions the aid program...

Fragile states are those characterised by problems of weak governance or of conflict, internal or cross-border. They are also described, less crisply but more carefully, as countries in fragile and conflict-affected situations – hence the acronym used in this paper, FCA countries. For about a decade the demands of providing international assistance to FCA countries...