The GFC has highlighted the critical importance of Australia's engagement with the US and industrialising giants of Asia. Increasingly, governments such as South Australia's are engaging directly with the region in an attempt to strengthen economic ties. The Engaging State shines a light on emerging forms of engagement in the Asia-Pacific.

The Decision-making tool promotes a principles-based approach in engagements with private sector entities so that credibility, integrity and sound government processes are ensured and protected. It offers a systematic methodology for identifying opportunities where the private sector could contribute to strengthening national and subnational NCD responses, while safeguarding public health policies from undue influence and conflicts of interest. The tool was designed to be practical and applicable across diverse contexts and scenarios, and throughout the various phases of an engagement cycle (i.e. planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation). The process consists of three phases, comprising a total of 10 steps that aim to guide users to reach informed decisions on engagement with private sector entities. Each step contains a set of questions presented in a sequential and comprehensive manner. It will help strengthening Member States’ capacity to engage with the private sector, by conducting due diligence of private sector actors, and identifying and mitigating risks, including conflict of interest and other risks associated with the engagement.

During fiscal 2003-05, World Bank lending and administrative budgets to fragile states amounted to $4.1 billion and $161 million, respectively. This report assesses the effectiveness of this Bank support. The report finds that the Bank and the donor community have improved their operational readiness to engage with fragile states, and made substantial progress on donor coordination at the international policy level. Significant challenges remain, however. Donor agendas have been overly ambitious and need to be made more selective, the effectiveness of donor programs needs to be improved after the immediate post-conflict phase in war-ravaged countries when structural change is needed, and donors need to develop transparent aid allocation criteria that ensure that fragile states will be neither under- nor over-aided. The report makes recommendations to overcome these challenges and distills lessons for the Bank and other donors.

In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, secessionist forces carved four de facto states from parts of Moldova, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Ten years on, those states are mired in uncertainty. Beset by internal problems, fearful of a return to the violence that spawned them, and isolated and unrecognized internationally, they survive behind cease-fire lines that have temporarily frozen but not resolved their conflicts with the metropolitan powers. In this, the first in-depth comparative analysis of these self-proclaimed republics, Dov Lynch examines the logic that maintains this uneasy existence and explores ways out of their volatile predicament. Drawing on extensive travel within Eurasia and remarkable access to leading figures in the secessionist struggles, Lynch spotlights the political, military, and economic dynamics--both internal and external--that drive the existence of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and Nagorno-Karabakh. He also evaluates a range of options for resolving the status of the de facto states before violence returns, and proposes a coordinated approach, spearheaded by the European Union, that balances de facto and de jure independence and sovereignty. Slim but packed with information and insight, this volume also offers instructive lessons about the dynamics of intrastate and ethnic conflict and the merits of autonomy and power sharing in places as diverse as Kosovo, Northern Cyprus, and Chechnya.

This Handbook walks non-State actors engaging with the World Health Organization (WHO) through the principles and processes of the Framework of engagement with non-State actors (FENSA) to ensure smooth interaction with WHO. The Handbook does not replace the text of FENSA. The Framework adopted by WHO Member States will be applied by the WHO Secretariat when engaging with non‐State actors.

Detention of Non-State Actors engaged in Hostilities: The Future Law explores legal dilemmas facing detention management during military missions overseas. Armed forces increasingly find themselves facing non-international armed conflict with non-state actors, such as insurgents, terrorists or other civilians, whom they might be permitted to kill or capture in some circumstances. The book considers the legal powers of military forces to apprehend non-State actors and to hold them in ongoing detention or to transfer them to judicial authorities for prosecution. It deals with both theoretical approaches and practical case studies concerning management and treatment of detainees. It concludes by synthesizing the options and delivering a detailed set of guidelines that are proposed as emerging norms for the detention of non-state actors in an armed conflict.

This report is a pilot cross-country study that summarizes 10 years (1998-2008) of the World Bank s engagement at the state level in selected large federal countries and combines elements of a country assistance evaluation and a thematic review. It looks at several strategic and operational questions posed by state-level engagement, among them the selection of states, the scope, and the modalities of engagement. According to the report, two tendencies often in tension featured in most approaches for selection of states for direct engagement. One was to support better-performing, reformist states, while the other was to support the poorest states as a more direct route to reducing poverty. Overall, the study confirms the desirability of continued selective lending in a few focus states. Among other findings: the Bank s engagement with progressive reformist states has added value and has been highly appreciated, but in order to enhance the poverty impact of state level interventions, greater weight should be given to the needs of poorest states by balancing states propensity to reform and the concentration of poverty within them; continued focus on public finance management appears sound, irrespective of whether engagement is confined to this area or serves as an entry point for broader engagement; there is considerable scope for greater impact from knowledge transfer between states and countries and expanded knowledge services to the state-level clients.

This guidance note provides operational guidance on the Fund’s engagement with small developing states (SDS). It highlights the unique economic characteristics and constraints facing SDS, notably in a more shock-prone world. Building on advice that applies to the full membership, the note explains how the characteristics of SDS shape Fund surveillance, financial support and program design, capacity development (CD), and collaboration with other institutions and donors. The note updates the previous version that was published in December 2017.

This study brings together Asian and Asia-based experts of international relations and U.S. foreign policy to present diverse Asian views about preferred modes of U.S. engagement in the region and compare their views with U.S. interests in the region-a prerequisite exercise to truly multilateral regional security governance. With the rise of Chinese power in absolute and relative terms over the next decades as a key driving factor of the international relations in the Asia Pacific, the United States has announced its "Rebalance to Asia" (previously referred as "Pivot to Asia") strategy. Asian responses, perceptions, and even interpretations of the U.S. strategy have been diverse. Misconceptions of the U.S. strategy can be attributed to the built-in contradictions among its objectives, deliberate ambiguities left by the architects of the strategy, mismatch between the stated strategy and actual policy implementations during the last three years, and subjective reading by the Asian countries through the lens of their own interests. This book will illuminate the diversity of Asian responses and perceptions and analyze the underlying reasons of the diversity. The overarching framework of analysis for this book is the very dilemma of alliances-abandonment and entrapment-which "hedging" aims at evading. "Abandonment" fear is primarily of the junior partner of an alliance that its senior partner may not come to its aid in crisis. Meanwhile, "entrapment" fear works both ways. The United States may drag its allies into its conflict against a third party, but U.S. allies may also drag the United States into their regional conflicts in which the United States has no direct or significant stake. The Asian choices of their strategic responses to the U.S. Rebalancing will be described and analyzed through the lens of the perceived balance between the abandonment and entrapment fears as well as other historical and domestic factors unique to each Asian country. The reading of the U.S. strategy by Asian countries is a subjective matter, and their interests likely influence their analysis and consequently strategies. It is not the aim of this volume to establish well defined "cause-and-effect" chain between the U.S. strategy and Asian strategies, but thick descriptions have enabled some chapter authors to identify reciprocal relations between the two. While China's growth is the most important driver of the changing strategic landscape in the Asia Pacific and the new U.S. strategy, the new U.S. strategy inevitably influence the Chinese strategy, which in turn triggers a chain reaction of strategic revisions in Asian countries. This book is essential reading for scholars in Asian politics, U.S. foreign policy, international relations as well as for policy makers.

Note: this is an abridged version of the book with references removed. The complete edition is also available on this website. This study brings together Asian and Asia-based experts of international relations and U.S. foreign policy to present diverse Asian views about preferred modes of U.S. engagement in the region and compare their views with U.S. interests in the region-a prerequisite exercise to truly multilateral regional security governance. With the rise of Chinese power in absolute and relative terms over the next decades as a key driving factor of the international relations in the Asia Pacific, the United States has announced its "Rebalance to Asia" (previously referred as "Pivot to Asia") strategy. Asian responses, perceptions, and even interpretations of the U.S. strategy have been diverse. Misconceptions of the U.S. strategy can be attributed to the built-in contradictions among its objectives, deliberate ambiguities left by the architects of the strategy, mismatch between the stated strategy and actual policy implementations during the last three years, and subjective reading by the Asian countries through the lens of their own interests. This book will illuminate the diversity of Asian responses and perceptions and analyze the underlying reasons of the diversity. The overarching framework of analysis for this book is the very dilemma of alliances-abandonment and entrapment-which "hedging" aims at evading. "Abandonment" fear is primarily of the junior partner of an alliance that its senior partner may not come to its aid in crisis. Meanwhile, "entrapment" fear works both ways. The United States may drag its allies into its conflict against a third party, but U.S. allies may also drag the United States into their regional conflicts in which the United States has no direct or significant stake. The Asian choices of their strategic responses to the U.S. Rebalancing will be described and analyzed through the lens of the perceived balance between the abandonment and entrapment fears as well as other historical and domestic factors unique to each Asian country. The reading of the U.S. strategy by Asian countries is a subjective matter, and their interests likely influence their analysis and consequently strategies. It is not the aim of this volume to establish well defined "cause-and-effect" chain between the U.S. strategy and Asian strategies, but thick descriptions have enabled some chapter authors to identify reciprocal relations between the two. While China's growth is the most important driver of the changing strategic landscape in the Asia Pacific and the new U.S. strategy, the new U.S. strategy inevitably influence the Chinese strategy, which in turn triggers a chain reaction of strategic revisions in Asian countries. This book is essential reading for scholars in Asian politics, U.S. foreign policy, international relations as well as for policy makers.