fragile states

Making the 2030 sustainable development agenda work for fragile and conflict affected states

At a technical meeting of the g7+ group of fragile states, participants from Haiti to Timor Leste gathered with a mission: to sift through the many proposed indicators for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and select 20 indicators for joint g7+ monitoring.

Hosted recently in Nairobi by the World Bank’s Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group, it was the first time that 17 out of 20 g7+ members were present, including senior officials from the National Statistics Offices and others. West African countries were particularly well represented. Their discussions were passionate: “We were mere spectators to the Millennium Development Goals. Now we want to actively push our specific challenges to the center of SDGs implementation,” said one. “Our motto is that no one is left behind,” said another.

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School children in the Central African Republic
Credit: © Pierre Holtz | UNICEF

At a meeting of the g7+ group of fragile states recently held in Nairobi, Bienvenu Hervé Kovoungbo looked back on his time in the same city, two years ago.

Back then, the citizens of his country, the Central African Republic (CAR), were caught in a fight between different militia groups. Bienvenu, who is the Director of Multilateral Cooperation and former Head of the Investment Budget Division in the Economy, Planning and International Cooperation Ministry, flew to Nairobi to attend a steering meeting of International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding. There, he appealed to g7+ colleagues and to donors to come to their assistance. After the meeting, he could not get back to the capital Bangui for two weeks, held up in Douala, Cameroon while his family had to flee their home and live with thousands of others in makeshift camps on the outskirts of the city.

TIMBUKTU, Mali - Months after a rebel attack was rebuffed in Mali, the country is striving to stabilize in order to fight poverty and boost shared prosperity. I'm visiting the West African nation with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to underline international commitment to the region.

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The Group of 20 leaders met for an intense 24-hour period over two days, discussing the situation in Syria and the global economy. Watch this video blog to hear what World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim thought shouldn't be forgotten in these important discussions.

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Imagine you are a leader of an African country and your entire government budget for the year is $1.2 billion.

That same year, an investor sells 51 percent of their stake in a huge iron ore mine in your country for $2.5 billion — more than double your annual government budget.

And imagine having ordered a review into mining licenses granted by previous regimes and knowing that the investor who made the $2.5 billion sale had been granted a mining license in your country for free.

It's what happened in Guinea. It's a story I heard Guinea's president, Alpha Condé tell the G8's trade, transparency and taxation conference in London. And it's a story I thought well worth sharing at the UN Security Council's meeting on fragile states and natural resources last week.

In two weeks, economic policymakers from around the world will gather in Washington, D.C., for the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings. As has been the case for the past five years, there will be much talk of economic crisis and of strategies to restore confidence, kick start growth, and create jobs. There is growing evidence that we are on the right track, but this agenda still requires much more work.

The meetings, though, also offer an occasion to look beyond the short term crisis-fighting measures. It is a chance for leaders to adopt a long-term perspective and assess where we stand and where we are headed.

If they do, they will see that today we are at a moment of historic opportunity. For the end of absolute poverty, a dream which has enticed and driven humanity for centuries, is now within our grasp.

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Photo: IDA16 Mid-Term Review, right to left, President Alassane Ouattara, Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Republic of Liberia, and Axel van Trotsenburg, Vice President of the World Bank, Concessional Finance & Global Partnerships. Credit: Abidjan.net

Two weeks ago, a consortium of donor and borrower countries met to take stock of progress on meeting commitments made by IDA, the World Bank's fund for the poorest countries. (Not sure what IDA is? Click here.) This meeting was an important check-in at the half-way point in what is known as IDA16—a three-year period running from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2014, during which special grant and soft loan financing is made available for life-changing works in the world's 81 poorest countries.

The meeting was hosted by Côte d'Ivoire, our first mid-term meeting held in a client country. The talks were attended by IDA Deputies and Borrower Representatives, individuals appointed to represent their governments on IDA.

Find a good longread on development? Tweet it to @worldbank with the hashtag #longreads.

The Economist’s much tweeted-about "Geography of Poverty" highlights a "poverty paradox" – that more of the world’s extremely poor people now live in middle-income countries rather than in the poorest ones. The finding comes from a new paper by Andy Sumner of the Institute of Development Studies. But the situation could change by 2025 if the number of poor people grows in fragile states, say Homi Kharas of the Brookings Institution and Andrew Rogerson of the Overseas Development Institute in the Economist. Veteran journalist Katherine Boo, author of a new book on life in a Mumbai slum, discusses the challenge of portraying poor people as individuals in the media, in an interview with Guernica in "Reporting Poverty." Big Chinese cities are starting to adopt measures with the potential to ease pollution and "improve the long-term quality of Chinese growth," according to a story in the New York Times. "A Chinese City Moves to Limit New Cars" describes, among other things, restrictions in Guangzhou expected to cut the number of cars on city streets in half. And finally, imagine vicariously smashing mosquitoes, riding a motorbike through the streets of Lagos, or remembering life in a rural village. The BBC writes about a Nigerian video game-maker who believes Africans and non-Africans alike may want to tap into the African experience through games.

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ABIDJAN, Cote d’Ivoire – At a jobs training center in this key capital city in West Africa, a young man showed me his newfound skills as an electrician. At a workshop, light bulbs flickered on and off. And then he told me something really important:

“It’s been 10 years since I graduated with my secondary school degree, and because of our conflict, I have never held a job. So this is a blessing to me,” said the young trainee. “But my brothers and sisters and so many people haven’t had this opportunity. I wonder how they can get jobs, too.”

Over at the Bank's Conflict and Development blog, Nicholas Van Praag, Communications Manager for the 2011 World Development Report, shares his thoughts on the insidious impact of violence on development.

He writes:

"With more than 1.5 billion people living in conflict-affected countries, the challenge is daunting. There’s no chance of coming close to attaining the MDGs at the global level unless we move from bumper-sticker aspiration to policy action in fragile states."

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