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Supporting essential services in protracted crisis and violence

What is the issue?

Millions of people live in places affected not by short-lived emergencies, but by protracted and recurrent crisis and violence. In these settings, schools, health services, water systems and other essential services still need to function, even when authority is contested, institutions are fragmented and resources are scarce.

Research developed through a multi-year collaboration between the World Bank and University of Birmingham has generated a new way of thinking about how development organisations can make more realistic and defensible choices about supporting essential services under these conditions.

Drawing on experience across 26 countries affected by protracted crisis and violence, the research shows that there is rarely a single ‘best’ model for delivering services. Instead, development actors face unavoidable trade-offs. Choices that improve immediate effectiveness may create political or institutional risks.

The research therefore proposes a different approach: begin with the political and institutional realities of the context, then calibrate ambitions and delivery choices around three objectives — effectiveness, do no harm and potential to last.

Policy Recommendations

  1. Treat protracted crisis as a distinct operating environment, rather than a temporary interruption to conventional development. Recurrent violence, political shocks and acute emergencies can recur over the lifespan of an intervention, requiring approaches that can adapt as conditions change.
  2. Before deciding what services to support, where, through whom and how, assess competing claims to authority, institutional fragmentation, resource constraints and inequalities in access. Use this analysis to identify the political and institutional risks associated with different delivery options, rather than relying on technical feasibility alone.
  3. Explicitly assess trade-offs between effectiveness, do no harm and potential to last. World Bank operational teams and other development partners should assess proposed interventions against three objectives: their capacity to deliver services effectively now, their potential to avoid exacerbating conflict or exclusion, and their prospects for sustaining services and development gains over time. Make the tensions between these objectives explicit when comparing delivery options and justify the priorities adopted.
  4. Adapt delivery arrangements as conditions evolve. Periodically revisit decisions about who delivers services and through which institutions, particularly when shifts in political authority, security or institutional capacity change the risks and opportunities associated with existing arrangements.
  5. Use the programme's decision-support framework to guide and document choices*. Apply a structured sequence: analyse the context and its political and institutional risks; calibrate ambitions against effectiveness, do no harm and potential to last; and use these judgements to determine what to support, where, through whom and how. Record the trade-offs and assumptions underpinning decisions so that choices can be revisited as conditions change.

About the research

The research was undertaken through a multi-year collaboration between the World Bank and University of Birmingham as part of the Bank’s analytical programme on service delivery in Protracted Crisis and Violence contexts.

Dr Claire Mcloughlin contributed as a lead academic to the programme, working with World Bank colleagues and operational teams on the conceptual framing, evidence synthesis and development of the decision-making framework.

Between 2023 and 2025, the programme reviewed evidence and operational experience across 26 PCV-affected countries, including work in health, education and urban service delivery. It drew on interviews, surveys and detailed reviews of World Bank operations.

The research identified three recurring conditions that fundamentally reshape service delivery in prolonged crises:

  • rival claims to authority, where governments, armed actors, international organisations and other authorities compete for control, resources or legitimacy;
  • fragmentation, where institutions, financing and delivery systems become divided or disconnected; and
  • scarcity, where severe resource constraints force difficult choices about who and what to prioritise.

Rather than prescribing fixed solutions, the resulting framework helps practitioners move from analysing context, to calibrating objectives, to making choices about what to support, where, through whom and how. Its core contribution is to make visible the trade-offs between effectiveness, do no harm and potential to last.

The work has subsequently moved from research into operational engagement. At the 2026 World Bank Fragility Forum, an interactive clinic co-hosted by the World Bank, UNICEF, WFP and ICRC used the framework to examine service-delivery choices in Afghanistan, DRC, Myanmar and Sudan. Participants applied it to challenges involving contested authority, fragmented systems, aid contraction and uncertain transition pathways.

From research to institutional practice

The research is informing an ongoing shift in how service delivery in fragile and conflict-affected environments is understood within the World Bank.

The Bank’s new 2026–2030 FCV Strategy adopts a differentiated approach rather than treating all FCV situations alike. Its decision-making framework distinguishes different forms of crisis and assesses programmes partly according to their “potential for lasting development impact.”

For countries in acute crisis where the Bank cannot work directly through government, the Strategy explicitly considers whether there are viable and institutionally sustainable local delivery platforms, including local institutions, community organisations and private-sector actors.

It also commits the Bank to adapt continuously its engagement as conditions evolve, rather than assuming a linear progression from crisis to recovery.

These ideas closely parallel the analytical logic developed through the PCV service-delivery programme: differentiating between types and phases of crisis, calibrating ambition to what is feasible, identifying delivery arrangements capable of sustaining outcomes, and adjusting choices as political and institutional conditions change.

Contact

Dr Claire Mcloughlin
Associate Professor of Politics and Development, University of Birmingham c.mcloughlin@bham.ac.uk

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The work can also be read alongside the World Bank Group’s Strategy for Engaging in Fragility, Conflict and Violence Affected Settings 2026–2030, which sets out the institution’s new differentiated approach to engagement in FCV contexts.