Large-scale investments in fragile states - in Latin America, Africa, the former Soviet Union and Asia - become magnets for conflict, which undermines business, development and security.

International policy responds with regulation, state-building and institutional reform, with poor and often perverse results. Caught up in old ways of thinking about conflict and fragility, and an age-old fight over whether multinational corporations are good or bad for peaceful development, it leaves business-related conflicts in fragile states to multiply and fester.