A significant share of the population in the Kyrgyz Republic – 37 percent – lived below the poverty line in 2011, according to the latest available data. And despite a relatively modest population of about 5.5 million, poverty rates across oblasts (provinces) span a striking range -- from 18 percent to 50 percent.
Why? Well, that is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
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Speaking ahead of the upcoming World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings, Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim called on the international community to seize the historic opportunity presented by favorable economic conditions in developing countries and end extreme poverty by 2030. This is an exciting goal, and success in achieving it has become possible. Kim pointed to the International Development Association, or IDA, the Bank’s fund for the poorest, as central to the tremendous effort needed to make this happen.
Every three years, development funders and borrowing country representatives meet to deliberate and agree on IDA’s strategic direction, financing, and allocation rules, and we just kicked off this process for the 17th “replenishment” of IDA (which provides development financing for the period July 1, 2014-June 30, 2017).
Two days of open discussion in Paris on March 20-21 with both investors and borrowers covered the complex development agenda faced by IDA countries, as well as the fund’s strategic approach to dealing with these issues. We worked to chart a way forward for IDA to most effectively improve the lives of the roughly 1 billion people in IDA countries still living on less than $1.25 a day.
The appetite for change at COP18 was heard loudly and clearly in the many informal gatherings at the conference center. Coalitions, climate finance, and scientific agreement came from the dynamic debate in Doha. To follow up those conversations, deals and dreams, and actionable projects, I have initiated a study to address the longer-term global challenges that we will face together in the decade ahead. Collective Solutions 2025 will present a strategy for how multilateral development institutions can achieve sustainable development and inclusive green growth to boost prosperity and end poverty.
The rate of change in our world is accelerating and every day there’s a new innovation or promising idea that springs up to provide hope for the "wicked" problems of our time. But development is complex and requires a sustained commitment to bold experimentation underpinned by a commitment to learn constantly. But learning does not happen in isolation. It happens through practice, through reflection, and through meaningful and sometimes unexpected exchanges with peers, practitioners, and colleagues from far flung places.
This is why I am really excited about a new online salon that we have unveiled at the World Bank. Striking Poverty aims to "shine a light and lend a megaphone" to innovations in development to help them percolate, surface, and be widely debated and discussed. The salon is designed to empower innovators by striking up interactive discussions and debate amongst a global community of stakeholders.
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Although I have committed much of my career to the global fight against HIV and AIDS, this year's World AIDS Day is a special one for me in two ways. First, there's the remarkable news from UNAIDS that more than 8 million people globally are now on treatment, and 25 countries have achieved more than a 50 percent decline in HIV prevalence. With this progress, I am more optimistic than ever about our ability to end AIDS.
As the US government’s new blueprint for an AIDS-free generation demonstrates, today we have the science, the knowledge, the experience, and the tools to fight the epidemic. I was particularly happy to see that the blueprint included multi-year, sustainability strategies and that it stressed the need to support country leadership. With that leadership, and with a long-term plan owned by countries, these efforts can succeed.
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World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim laid out his vision October 12 for transforming the institution into a “solutions bank” that uses evidence and experience to solve problems and listens more closely to the people coping with economic and social challenges in their daily life.
“… It is time to move from dreaming of a world free of poverty to achieving it,” Dr. Kim said at the opening plenary session of the 2012 Annual Meetings in Tokyo. The meeting was attended by representatives from the Bank’s 188 member countries and Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito.
“It is time to bend the arc of history. With global solidarity underpinned by a relentless drive for results, we can, we must, and we will build shared prosperity and end poverty,” Dr. Kim said.
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A few weeks ago, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim started a global conversation on what it will take to end poverty, and invited the public to send him feedback. On the opening day of the 2012 Annual Meetings in Tokyo, he shared some of his own ideas for tackling the problem during a live interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Kim sat down with Jacob Schlesinger, Tokyo bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires., to discuss a variety of concerns--from the need to create jobs and find solutions to climate change, to Dr. Kim’s pledge to ramp up efforts to achieve the Bank’s longstanding goal of eliminating extreme poverty.
On the latter topic, a woman from Ghana asked, “What will happen if poverty ends? What next?”
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At the World Bank Group, we want to help create a social movement to end poverty and to enhance shared prosperity. But how do you do that? More broadly, how do you start any social movement?
It's not easy. The world is littered with failed attempts. The roadblocks are numerous - including skeptics casting doubt, saying the task is impossible and that others have tried and failed. Why spend time on a futile endeavor? Even if Albert Camus thought he was happy, Sisyphus never did get the boulder to the top of the mountain.
But in nearly three decades of working to fight poverty, I have come to conclude that optimism in the face of seemingly intractable problems is a choice. If your cause is just and you are working in an institution with the means to truly make a difference in the lives of the poor, optimism of the spirit is a moral responsibility.
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What inspires change? What has impact on policy? What really motivates us to do social good?
Here’s one story from my past that I’ll never forget.
In 1987, Dr. Paul Farmer and I and a few others helped start a group called Partners in Health to provide access to quality health care to the poor. In the beginning, the majority of our work was centered in Haiti. Seven years later, in 1994, we set up a program in Carabayllo, a settlement on the outskirts of Lima, Peru.
We began our program in Peru because a good friend of ours -- Father Jack Roussin – said we must. He said the area needed a much stronger primary health system, and so we helped build a cadre of community health workers. Our organization there, Socios en Salud, worked to improve the health care of people in the community, employed 20 local young people, built a pharmacy, and then conducted a health assessment for the town.
Then Father Jack became ill. He started losing weight. I urged him to return to his home in Boston. When he finally did, tests revealed that his lungs were full of tuberculosis (TB). And it wasn’t any TB. It was multi drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). His disease was resistant to the four major drugs used to treat TB. Soon after, Father Jack died.
We went back to Carabayllo and investigated. Why did he have drug-resistant TB? We found an alarming number of cases of MDR-TB. We did two things: First, we immediately started looking for supplies of the drugs that could treat TB cases we discovered. We gave those to patients, and to our great relief we were able to cure most of them. Second, we started to push for a global program to treat poor people everywhere suffering from drug-resistant TB.
