Britain is to target foreign aid at improving security and justice in the world's most "fragile" states.

International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander is due to say that up to half of new aid could be pushed into states ravaged by war, weak governments and poverty-fuelled civil unrest.

Countries such as Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan will be the main beneficiaries of the switch, which will be set out in a White Paper arguing that security and justice are "basic services".

Funding for those areas will be more than doubled and pumped into community policing, legal training, dispute resolution, securing peace agreements and creating jobs, such as post-conflict rebuilding.

A Government source said: "We will never eradicate world poverty unless we focus on the most fragile countries. We must tackle the difficulties they face head on.

"Security and justice are human rights. We want to ensure they are treated as basic services for all people. That is why we will put them at the heart of our aid programmes.

"The people we are helping are among the most disadvantaged in the world. They deserve to have confidence in their local police, know they can seek justice when they are wronged and have the opportunity to work.

"In an interdependent world, this is not just in their interests but in ours."

The change in priorities was signalled by Mr Alexander in a speech in April when he said: "Poor people want security and justice in the same way that they want sanitation, education or health care. Without it they cannot tend their fields, collect water, send their children to school or seek to improve their incomes. Insecurity is a handbrake on development."

He warned then that aid agencies had become "afraid to engage in building political institutions for fear of being accused of interfering in a developing country's politics".

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