Middle East and North Africa

World Refugee Day: What you need to know about the displaced and their host communities

Today is World Refugee Day, a day for us all to remember how many people are moved or displaced from their homes—either within their own country or across borders.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) just announced that there were 22.5 million refugees and 40 million displaced internally due to conflicts last year, as well as many more forced to move due to natural disasters.
Forced displacement is a crisis centered in developing countries, which host 89% of refugees and 99% of internally displaced persons. Watch a video below and learn how the crisis affects the displaced and their host communities alike around the world.

How to host 200,000 refugee students in your education system: An answer from Lebanon

Syrian refugee students listen to their school teacher during math classes — *(Photo: Dominic Chavez/World Bank)*

World Refugee Day happens once year, but the issues it is designed to highlight are a daily concern for Lebanon. As the country which hosts the world’s largest number of refugees per capita, Lebanon holds some important lessons. Lebanon almost doubled the size of its national public education system in five years in response to the ongoing refugee crisis, something no country has ever done before. The large increases in primary education seen particularly in African countries in the last decade and a half rarely accounted for more than a 50 percent increase in the total public school population as they were focused on the first six years of school; Lebanon has increased its overall public school population by almost 100 percent.

Standing #WithRefugees: Helping Jordan with the Provision of Health Services to Syrian Refugees

Syrian refugee children at Za’atari Camp, Jordan
Photo credit: Aaka Pande, March 15, 2017

March 15, 2017. She looked at me curiously, sipping on her juice box. Her pink sweater in contrast to her anemic pallor. If it had not been for the drip in her right arm, she could be any five year old child. Except she was not. She was a refugee, one of the more than 650,000 Syrians that Jordan has been hosting since the start of the war. Exactly six years ago, the civil war in Syria had started a couple of miles away. Six years later the war continued. It was all this girl had seen in her lifetime.

Global opinion leaders show increased use of social media for information on development

Social media is increasingly becoming a driver of conversation on several topics including global development. The World Bank’s Public Opinion Research Group conducts Country Opinion Surveys in about 40 developing countries every year and found that the number of global opinion leaders using social media to get information on global development is steadily increasing.

Global Economic Prospects in 10 Charts: June 2017

Also available in: Chinese

The World Bank forecasts that global economic growth will strengthen to 2.7 percent in 2017 as a pickup in manufacturing and trade, rising market confidence, and stabilizing commodity prices allow growth to resume in commodity-exporting emerging market and developing economies. Growth in advanced economies is expected to accelerate to 1.9 percent in 2017, a benefit to their trading partners. Amid favorable global financing conditions and stabilizing commodity prices, growth in emerging market and developing economies as a whole will pick up to 4.1 percent this year from 3.5 percent in 2016. Nevertheless, substantial risks cloud the outlook. These include the possibility of greater trade restriction, uncertainty about trade, fiscal and monetary policy, and, over the longer term, persistently weak productivity and investment growth.

Download the June 2017 Global Economic Prospects report.

Global growth is projected to strengthen to 2.7 percent in 2017, as expected. Emerging market and developing economies are anticipated to grow 4.1 percent – faster than advanced economies.

Global Growth

The Middle East, version 2.0.

Let’s be honest. The Middle East and North Africa is burning, and in some areas it is literally burning. Conflict and fragility have long warped what once was the cradle of civilization and the inspiration for the many inventions we can’t live without today. However, in the midst of that fire hope rises, a driver of change that is transforming the ugly reality into a bright future.

After I fled the war in Iraq in 2006, I was pessimistic about what the future was holding for that region. Year after another, the domino-effect of collapse became a reality that shaped the region and its people. Yet, fast-forward to 2017, I have witnessed what I never thought I would see in my lifetime: the new renaissance in the Middle East and North Africa.

I have just recently come back from attending the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the Dead Sea in Jordan. This year, the Forum and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, partnered to bring together 100 Arab start-ups that are shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

There, the positive vibe was all around; no negativity, no pessimism. Instead there was a new sense of optimism and enthusiasm, hunger for change, and the will to take the region to a whole new future, away from conflict and the current norm of pessimism.

New Zealand has much to offer the world

New zealand - World maps on line — New Zealand Map. Photo Credit: Academia maps GeoAtlas

When people think about New Zealand’s most famous son, Sir Edmund Hillary, they mostly think about the quiet Auckland bee-keeper who conquered Everest in 1953.

Of course, there’s much more to the man. He raised money for the Sherpa communities in Nepal that built schools, hospitals and much more. His commitment to the people of South Asia was also reflected in his successful term in the 1980s as New Zealand’s High Commissioner to India.

As the most senior New Zealander in the management of the World Bank, I have come to appreciate Sir Edmund’s commitment to the people of South Asia and believe it shows how much New Zealand can offer the world. This will not only make the world a better place but can also help New Zealand too.

Putting one more piece in the global poverty puzzle: the case of Algeria

The World Bank Group (WBG) has clear goals to end poverty by 2030 and to promote shared prosperity in every country, both of which guide our operations, analysis, and policy advice. In setting these ambitious goals, it is not surprising to note that the WBG has made the measurement of extreme poverty an explicit corporate goal and has taken up a commitment to undertake a close and reliable monitoring.

In the Middle East and North Africa region, financial flows in 2015 went against the global trend

Now that the 2017 edition of International Debt Statistics (IDS) has been released, as a member of the team who put these statistics together, I thought I would look back at what the data tells us about financial flows into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

According to IDS 2015 data, net financial flows (debt and equity) to all low and middle income countries were only one third of their 2014 levels ($1,159 billion). In particular net debt flows turned negative (-$185 billion) for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, while foreign direct investment (FDI) showed a marginal increase of $7 billion from $536 billion in 2014. These phenomena were observed in all regions but MENA.

The net debt inflows into the MENA region diverged from global trends. The inflows increased 84 percent from 2014. On the other hand, FDI recorded its lowest level since 2010.

Women driving the Middle East and North Africa forward, one business innovation at a time

Our continued belief in the enormous resourcefulness, resilience and sheer drive of young Arab women has yet again been reconfirmed.

Middle East and North Africa

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