The Threat to International Security from Fragile and Failed States: Proliferation of Organised Crime

Fragile states pose an international threat to criminal infiltration that occurs more easily than states with functioning governments and institutions. Fragile states, delegitimised by their own population, unable to provide for the needs of their citizens and maintain control over their territory, have a non-functioning government and many problems to which the legitimate state fails to respond. In such a scenario, they become a breeding ground for criminal organisations that, becoming increasingly powerful, radicalized, and transnational, replace the delegitimised state. Criminal actors find in these states safe havens where they can act for their own interests, and where the proliferation of organised crime feeds on the problems and fragilities of institutions, making them also capable of providing solutions to the population for those problems to which the government has been unable to find solutions.