JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:02 PM
Page 3
THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT THE WORLD BANK
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:02 PM
Page 4
THE
W
C
DRAM
JP7138 ten things
E
9/5/03
1:02 PM
Page 5
WORLD BANK’S PRIORITIES HAVE
CHANGED
A M AT I C A L LY
The World Bank’s work in more than one hundred countries is challenging. But its mission is simple: to help reduce poverty. Over the past 20 years, the Bank’s focus has changed and so has its approach. It is now addressing newer issues like gender, community-driven development and indigenous peoples, and its support for social services like health, nutrition, education, and pensions has grown from 5 percent in 1980 to 22 percent in 2003. Today, countries themselves are coming to the World Bank with their own plans for helping poor people and the Bank has adopted new ways of working with them.
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:02 PM
Page 6
JOHN ISAAC/WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
The World Bank is the world’s largest external funder of education
1:02 PM
Page 7
Education is central to development. The Bank has committed some US$33 billion in loans and credits for education, and currently finances 157 projects in 83 countries. The Bank works closely with national governments, United Nations agencies, donors, civil society organizations, and other partners to support developing countries in their efforts to reach the Education for All goals — that all children, especially girls and disadvantaged children, are enrolled in and able to complete a primary education by 2015. A good example of the Bank’s lending in this area is the India District Primary Education Program, which specifically targets girls in districts where female literacy rates are below the national average. Bank funding for this program is now up to US$1.3 billion and serves more than 60 million students in 271 low-literacy districts in 18 of the 29 Indian states. In Brazil, El Salvador, and Trinidad and Tobago, Bank projects have helped local communities increase their influence in the quality of education for their children by enabling them to evaluate the performance of local schools and teachers.
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:02 PM
Page 8
2
Each day, 14,000 more people become newly infected with the HIV virus. Half of them are between the ages of 15 and 24. HIV/AIDS is rapidly reversing many of the social and economic gains made by developing countries over the past 50 years. As a co-sponsor of UNAIDS, the umbrella group that coordinates the global response to the epidemic, the World Bank has committed, in the last few years, more than US$1.6 billion to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS around the world. It has been one of the largest financial supporters of HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries. The Bank has pledged that no country with an effective HIV/AIDS strategy will go without funding. In partnership with African and Caribbean governments, the Bank launched the Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program (MAP), which makes significant resources available to civil society organizations and communities. Many have developed highly innovative HIV/AIDS approaches, from which others are learning and adapting to local conditions. In 2002, MAP made available US$1 billion to help countries in Africa expand their national prevention, care, and treatment programs. Additionally, every year the Bank commits an average of US$1.3 billion in new lending for health, nutrition, and population projects in the developing world.
The World Bank is the world’s largest external funder of the fight against HIV/AIDS
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
TREVOR SAMSON/WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY
Page 9
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY
1:03 PM
Page 10
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 11
3
The World Bank is a leader in the fight against corruption worldwide
Corruption is a roadblock to development: it taxes poor people by diverting public resources from those who need them most. It also undermines investment, human capital, growth, voice and equality. Since 1996, the Bank has launched hundreds of governance and anticorruption programs and initiatives in nearly 100 developing countries. Initiatives range from disclosure of assets by government officials and public expenditure reforms, to training judges and teaching investigative reporting to journalists. The Bank's commitment to addressing corruption has helped spearhead a global response to the problem, while it continues to integrate anticorruption measures into its analytical and operational work. It is committed to ensuring that the projects it finances are free from corruption, setting up stringent guidelines and a hotline for corruption complaints; about 100 entities have been declared ineligible to be awarded Bank-financed contracts. Further, the World Bank Institute has developed a major knowledge, learning, and data center on governance and anti-corruption.
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 12
4
In 1996, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund launched the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative — the first comprehensive effort to cut the external debt of the world’s poorest, most debtladen countries. Today, 26 countries are receiving debt relief projected to amount to US$40 billion over time. The HIPC Initiative, combined with other forms of debt relief, will cut by two-thirds the external debt in these countries — lowering their debt levels to below the overall average for developing countries. As part of the initiative, these countries are redirecting government funds freed up by debt relief, into programs to cut poverty. For example, Rwanda has set targets to hire teachers and increase primary school enrollments. Honduras plans to deliver basic primary and maternal/child health care to at least 100,000 people in poor communities. Cameroon is strengthening the fight against HIV/AIDS by, among other things, expanding education to promote the use of condoms by high-risk groups.
The World Bank strongly supports debt relief
ERIC
JP7138 ten things
ERIC MILLER/WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 13
JP7138 ten things
HAROLD CASTRO, CI
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 14
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 15
5
The World Bank is one of the largest international funders of biodiversity projects
Since 1988, the Bank has become one of the largest international funders of biodiversity projects. Even though biodiversity loss is a global concern, the greatest impacts are felt by rural people in developing countries where they are most dependent on natural resources for food, shelter, medicine, income, employment, and their cultural identity. For this reason, the Bank has joined Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Japanese government in a fund that contributes to better protection of developing countries’ biodiversity hotspots. Sixty percent of all terrestrial species’ diversity can be found in these highly threatened regions, which cover only 1.4 percent of the planet’s total surface area. Concern for the environment is central to the Bank’s poverty reduction mission. In addition to environmental assessments and safeguard policies, the Bank's environment strategy focuses on climate change, forests, water resources, and biodiversity. Currently, the Bank’s portfolio of projects with clear environmental objectives amounts to around US$13 billion.
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 16
6
During the past six years, the Bank has joined a large array of partners in the global fight against poverty. For example, to help reduce the effects of global warming it collaborated with governments and the private sector to launch the new BioCarbon Fund, and with the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) to launch the Community Development Carbon Fund (CDCF). The Bank is also working with the World Wildlife Fund to protect forests. With the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), it sponsors the renowned Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research — which mobilizes cutting-edge science to reduce hunger and poverty, improve human nutrition and health, and protect the environment. Through the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, the Bank works with 27 other multilateral and donor organizations that support microfinance to help build top-quality, full-service financial systems in developing countries to serve their poorest citizens. A partnership to defeat river blindness throughout Africa has successfully prevented 700,000 cases of blindness, opened 25 million hectares of arable land to cultivation, and treats more than 35 million people a year for the disease.
The World Bank works in partnership more than ever before
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
CHRISTOFFEL-BLINDENMISSION
1:03 PM
Page 17
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 18
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 19
7
The World Bank is helping bring clean water, electricity and transport to poor people
DOMINIC SANSONI/WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY
While most people in the developed world take infrastructure for granted, it remains a dreamed-of luxury in many parts of the world. Almost 1.4 billion people in developing countries lack access to clean water. Some 3 billion live without basic sanitation or electricity. Infrastructure is not simply about the construction of large projects. It is about delivering basic services that people need for everyday life. It is about upgrading slums and providing roads to connect the poorest urban areas. Infrastructure is also an important part of the World Bank’s efforts to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Delivering safe water has a direct impact on reducing child mortality. Providing communities with electricity avoids women and children spending long hours fetching firewood for cooking and heating, and gives them more time for other activities. Children, especially, are able to devote more time to schoolwork. In Morocco, a Bank-supported road project helped increase girls’ enrollment in schools from 28 percent to 68 percent. Infrastructure also connects communities to the world around them. A rural electrification project in Ecuador is helping improve living standards and broaden opportunities by linking poor communities to telecommunications, electricity, the Internet, and business services.
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 20
8
The growth of civil society over the past two decades has been one of the most significant trends in international development. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are not only influential in the global development policy debate, but have become important channels for social service delivery and innovative development programs. CSO involvement in Bank-funded projects has risen from 21 percent of all projects in 1990 to about 72 percent in 2003. The World Bank is also increasingly supporting such groups as community groups, NGOs, trade unions and faith-based organizations through greater information sharing, skills training, and grant funding. Every year, the Bank provides grant funds to CSOs at the country level to rebuild war-torn communities, social services and community development. Its civil society staff in more than 70 country offices consult and collaborate with CSOs on a range of issues, from AIDS prevention and micro-credit development to fighting corruption and protecting the environment.
Civil society plays an ever larger role in the Bank’s work
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY
1:03 PM
Page 21
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY
1:03 PM
Page 22
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 23
9
The World Bank helps countries emerging from conflict
The Bank is currently active in 40 conflict-affected countries, working with government and non-government partners, local and international, to assist war-torn populations, resume peaceful development, and prevent relapse into violence. The Bank's work addresses a range of needs, including jump-starting the economy, repairing and rebuilding war-damaged infrastructure and institutions, clearing land mines, reintegrating ex-combatants and displaced populations, and targeting programs to vulnerable groups such as widows and children. The Bank has also developed tools and research to better analyze and understand the sources of conflict, and to promote economic growth and poverty reduction in a way that reduces the risk of future violence. Among the wideranging and innovative projects supported by the Bank are demobilization of ex-combatants in the Great Lakes Region; infrastructure reconstruction and community empowerment efforts in Afghanistan; addressing psycho-social trauma in war-affected communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina; rehabilitation of street children in the Democratic Republic of Congo; early reconstruction through a community empowerment and local governance project in Timor-Leste; and a program to protect the property of Colombians uprooted by conflict.
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
1:03 PM
Page 24
Conversations with 60,000 poor people in 60 countries, as well as our day-to-day work, have taught the Bank that poverty is about more than inadequate income or even low human development. It is also about voicelessness and powerlessness. It is about vulnerability to abuse and corruption. It is about lack of fundamental freedom of action, choice, and opportunity. The Bank believes that people who live in poverty should not be treated as a liability, but as a resource and a partner in the fight against poverty. An empowering approach to poverty reduction puts poor people at the center of development and creates the conditions where they can gain increased control over their lives through better access to information, inclusion and participation in decision-making, accountability, and local organizational capacity. Today, the Bank supports a variety of community-driven development projects with funding commitments of more than US$2 billion. Other ways of investing in poor people's empowerment include social accountability mechanisms in Bank operations, community-managed school programs, judicial reform and access to justice programs, and the promotion of citizen scorecards to rate basic services.
The World Bank is responding to the voices of poor people
JP7138 ten things
9/5/03
CURT CARNEMARK-WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY
1:03 PM
Page 25
JP7138 ten things
printed on recycled paper September 2003
9/5/03
1:02 PM
Page 2