CSIS Launches Project on Fragility and Mobility

WASHINGTON, May 17, 2021: The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is pleased to launch the Project on Fragility and Mobility within the International Security Program. Erol Yayboke, senior fellow with the CSIS International Security Program, will direct this new initiative. It will center on two main areas of focus—global fragility and human mobility—and explore new ways to define long-standing challenges in post-conflict and fragile contexts, civil wars, and stabilization efforts.

“The challenges of the twenty-first century call for greater coordination between defense, diplomacy, and development,” said CSIS president and CEO John J. Hamre. “This new project will examine U.S. leadership in fragile contexts, and I look forward to the new ideas and voices it will amplify.”

CSIS is establishing the Project on Fragility and Mobility in response to some of the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century: the growing severity of transnational challenges, including climate change and global pandemics; historic levels of forced displacement and migration; and violent conflicts that are increasing both in number and duration. These concerns will dominate the agendas of policymakers for years to come and require creative, interdisciplinary solutions.

“Erol has an outstanding background to oversee CSIS’s Project on Fragility and Mobility, with his mix of objective analysis and field research in fragile states and conflict zones,” noted Seth G. Jones, senior vice president and director of the International Security Program.

This initiative will provide government, nonprofit, and private sector leaders with evidence-based recommendations on how to boost community resilience, ensure safe and orderly human mobility patterns, and develop stability out of conflict. It will connect Defense Department, State Department, Treasury, U.S. Agency for International Development, and other U.S. government policymakers with critical field perspectives, bilateral allies and partners within the multilateral system, private actors, and other key stakeholders operating in these theaters. In doing so, the project seeks to align U.S. national security interests with international human mobility-related frameworks, guided by the belief that protecting vulnerable people on the move allows us to secure our collective futures.

“Forced migration and displacement is one of the most important challenges of our time,” said Daniel F. Runde, CSIS senior vice president and director of the Project on Prosperity and Development. “It is very encouraging to see Erol elevate this issue through this new initiative.”

Before joining the CSIS International Security Program, Yayboke was deputy director and senior fellow with the CSIS Project on Prosperity and Development. Previously, he was a program/research manager on the Evidence for Policy Design team at the Center for International Development at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Yayboke also has long-term field experience working for organizations in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and the Somali Region of Ethiopia, serving in various senior country and project management roles.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.