October 2018
As one of the forerunners of the World Bank’s new Human Capital Project, Tunisia was one of the six countries that presented their vision for human capital development at the World Bank Annual Meetings held October 10 – 11 in Bali, Indonesia.
“We had lost hope,” said Muneera’s father. “As her health deteriorated and her body weakened, we worried that she could not last much longer.” Six months short of her fourth birthday, Muneera was suffering the effects of malnutrition, which had put her life in danger. Though she lived near Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, Muneera’s family did not have the resources to take her for medical care. Like thousands of other children in Yemen, the deteriorating conditions due to ongoing instability had led to malnutrition.
Many of us move in circles where we take our mobility across borders for granted. The pull of a better education or a higher paying job has taken so many of us far away from home. Beyond our personal experiences, at the World Bank we’ve made the case on the benefits of greater mobility and we’re walking the talk. Using economist’s jargon of “improving resource allocation,” “matching supply and demand,” or “responding to economic and demographic forces,” we want to demonstrate that mobility can be a potent instrument to unlock prosperity, alleviate unemployment, and boost investment in building the human capital.
“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is.” This quote is attributed to the mathematician Jean Allen Paulos but could also capture the feeling of development practitioners trying to find ways to effectively support people and institutions in countries affected by fragility, conflict and violence (FCV).
