Philippines

We know the impact of violence can last generations. We also know that people can be affected by repeated cycles of conflict and instability. The result is that the poor get poorer and become less resilient to further shocks, whether natural or man-made.

A new report, Violent Conflicts and Displacement in Central Mindanao: Challenges for recovery and development (available at www.worldbank.org/ph), looks at vulnerability in some of the most conflict-affected areas of southern Philippines. A joint initiative between the World Bank’s State and Peacebuilding Fund and the World Food Programme, it examines people’s experience of conflict and the effect of violence on their daily lives. 

- Four in every ten households had experienced displacement between 2000 and 2010. As many as one in ten had been forced to leave their homes five times during the decade. In the province of Maguindanao, as many as 82 percent reported experiencing displacement in that time.

It took 41 years for the fastest developing 20 countries in the 20th century to achieve basic transformations in the rule of law.  However, the World Development Report 2011 suggests that fragile countries cannot afford to wait that long.  Instead, in managing disputes, it is imperative for governments and the international community to support arrangements that fit each country context, take into account capacity constraints in government and the local level, and respond to the needs of users. Justice reform should be measured accordingly from a functional perspective—based on the needs of users—rather than abstract modeling of institutions on western approaches. 

The World Bank recently launched an East Asia energy flagship report in Singapore: “Winds of Change: East Asia’s Sustainable Energy Future” (full disclosure: I’m the lead author). This report recommends that six East Asian countries (China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) shift to a low-carbon sustainable energy path that can stabilize CO2 emissions by 2025, improve local environment, and enhance energy security without compromising economic growth. The report calls for immediate government action on policy and institutional reforms to transform the energy sector towards much higher efficiencies and more widespread use of low-carbon technologies.

There was wide media coverage for the report’s launch in Singapore. Most of the news coverage focused on the price tag of $80 billion for the additional annual financing needs to shift to the sustainable energy path recommended in the report. Some suggested that the price tag is too expensive, while others compared it with the China’s green stimulus of $200 billion.  The good news is that the energy savings from energy efficiency and many renewable energy technologies will pay for this additional investment costs. The challenge is how to mobilize such a large amount of financing in a timely manner.

Some recipients of a scholarship given to young girls in Cambodia at the end of primary school. The program has had a significant effect on girls’ secondary enrollment. (photo by Deon Filmer)

Those of us who have had the pleasure of raising an adolescent girl – and survived the experience – might blanch at the thought of a program to stimulate education that gave her, rather than the doting parent, a grant equivalent to 3% of the family’s average per capita monthly consumption. And yet, that’s exactly what a policy experiment, conducted by my friend Berk Ozler and other researchers, did in Malawi. What’s more, they found that raising these girl-targeted cash transfers increased school attendance much more than raising those given to parents.

Empowering women with resources has long been recognized as a powerful weapon to safeguard investments in human capital. Research has shown that transfers to women have a more powerful effect than to men in raising school attendance and ensuring that kids are immunized. But more recent research, like Berk et al.’s, is showing that policies aimed directly at adolescent girls and young women may have an even greater effect, not only in encouraging schooling but in ensuring reproductive health. Pascaline Dupas’ policy experiment in Kenya showed that simply giving young women information showing that older men were more likely to be HIV-positive led them to eschew partnering with ‘sugar daddies’.