In the last 20 years, there has been a growing preoccupation with fragile contexts. International development and diplomatic communities have focused on implementing Western-oriented education policies centered on democratisation efforts to transform fragile contexts. In order to understand what happens when education reform policies are enmeshed with the world they are designed to change, this project focuses on the educational actors who create and take up citizenship education in Kosovo. Using ethnographic methods, the research examines how educational actors are making sense of the citizenship education competency within the economic, political and social conditions framing Kosovo as a fragile state. This article highlights how the curriculum was rendered technical in the implementation process producing the unintended consequence of perpetuating conditions that have justified Kosovo's categorisation as a fragile state. This research raises important questions about the implementation of education reform policies used as a panacea to address state fragility.