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The fragile states and stabilisation concepts appear to resonate with the concept of community resilience. Yet, there is barely a framework that integrates the three concepts. The authors posit that despite the increasing interest in community resilience in fragile states, there is much less clarity of resilience, fragility and stabilisation connections. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper is based on the literature review of the concepts of community resilience, fragility and stabilisation.

The findings restate that the state fragility results from the breakdown of the social contract between the state and its citizens. Whilst both resilience and stabilisation are desirable constructs in reducing fragility, they should be broadly underpinned by agency not only to enhance preventive, anticipatory, absorptive and adaptive actions but also lead to social transformative capacity where agency is embedded for communities to exercise some sort of power to foster change.

This paper has encourages debate on resilience, fragility and stabilisation connections by suggesting framework for “doing” resilience-informed stabilisation programmes in fragile states. The framework, which may not necessarily be approached in a linear fashion, has three major components: identifying existing resilience factors, enhancing and sustaining these and delivering resilient communities. However, there is need to test the utility of the framework in practice.

Building institutional capacity to prevent, prepare and respond to disasters is among aspects emphasized in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005‐2015 to enhance the resilience of disaster‐affected communities. Lessons from past programmes could help the design and implementation of future capacity building interventions with a view to making them both a means and an end in themselves in building disaster resilience of communities and nations. This paper aims to explore the issues.

The paper is based on the authors' experiences and reports in institutional capacity building in Ethiopia.

Institutional capacity building programmes should adopt a non‐intervention approach, using existing structures. Programmes should be demand‐driven and beneficiary‐based rather than supply‐driven and should be holistic and integrated with coordination being an important ingredient. Capacity building is a slow process and unless all partners are willing to make a choice in favour of assessing and working the holistic and integrated capacity building will struggle to make a lasting influence in reducing disasters and their impacts to Ethiopians.

With capacity building being at the centre of the building community, resilience, coordination by donors as well as government agencies is fundamental.

The paper illuminates areas of good practice as well as complexities surrounding the delivery of the disaster resilience through capacity building and how governments and development and humanitarian agencies are implicated.