Bahrain has made exceptional progress in establishing stability and prosperity for its citizens, as indeed have many of the other Gulf states.

'But whatever our own achievements as states - large and small - we are all increasingly bound together in the processes of globalisation,' World Bank vice-president for poverty reduction and economic management Otaviano Canuto said at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) conference in Bahrain yesterday.

'We know only too well that none of us can be isolated from global trends and global forces,' he said.

'Global forces have become all too real in the last couple of years.

'Some commentators have noted that we now face three major crises. The first is climate change. Climate science has been building an evidence base for a decade. It has taken a while for the full extent of the crisis - and I use the word advisedly - to reveal itself. The world is now trying to catch up.

'The second is the economic and fiscal crisis from which the world now seems to be slowly recovering. The recent turmoil in the euro zone has reminded us that we are not out of the woods yet.

'The third crisis is perhaps less recognised, but is no less important for that. And that is the crisis of fragile and conflict-affected states.

'As the World Bank Group president Robert Zoellick told the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Geneva in September 2008, fragile states are the toughest development challenge of our era.

'Much of the world has made rapid progress in building stability and reducing poverty in the past 60 years, but areas characterised by persistent violence and fragile institutions are being left far behind,' he said.

'In the lead up to September's Millennium Development Review Conference, it is important to underline that no fragile or conflict-affected state has yet achieved any of the Millennium Development Goals and few are on track to do so. When one excludes India, China and Russia from statistics, over two out of every three deaths of infants and children under five, mothers dying in childbirth and children without access to schooling worldwide are in conflict-affected countries or those recently recovering from conflict.'

'I have suggested that insecurity and conflict constitute the third current global crisis,' he said.

'I have argued economic prospects and security are now recognised as being interlinked and interdependent and there is an important third pillar in addressing balancing of power relations: that is, perceptions of justice and inclusion.'-TradeArabia News Service