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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For almost a year, the World Bank has been supporting the Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI) in Haiti, where much of the country is still recovering from the 2010 earthquake. Through this program, 1,000 low-income Haitian girls between the ages of 17 and 20 who did not complete secondary school have been able to receive vocational and technical training in areas of work not traditionally open to women.
The program seeks to ensure that these young Haitian women can enter the labor force with skills and experience. Internships are an integral component of the training they receive. In this context, the acquisition of technical skills suited to labor market needs and a change in mindset are critical to altering this situation in tangible ways.
I had the opportunity to go to Port-au-Prince when the program was launched and meet the future beneficiaries. I returned a few weeks ago to observe the progress made.
If you want to fundamentally change how countries use energy, value their natural environments, or combat climate change, you have to talk to the people who hold the purse strings.
That’s what we’re doing this week. Finance ministers from countries around the world are in Washington for the annual World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings. We’re talking with them about these issues and more as we help countries shift to more sustainable development.
Underlying everything: climate change. This isn’t just an environmental challenge – it’s a fundamental threat to economic development and the fight against poverty. I can’t repeat that often enough. If the world does not take bold action now, a disastrously warming planet threatens to put prosperity out of reach for millions and roll back decades of development.
April 15, 2013--The private sector could play a key role in ending extreme poverty by 2030 by gathering high quality data and evidence of entrepreneurial impact in developing countries, speakers said at a conference organized by IFC and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ahead of the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings.
World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and IFC CEO Jin-Yong Cai of the Bank Group’s private sector arm called the private sector an invaluable ally in a plan to reduce global extreme poverty to 3% by 2030, and foster income growth of the bottom 40% of the population in every country. Those targets will be proposed to the World Bank’s Board of Governors this weekend.
“There is no way that we’ll get there without a robust private sector that is creating the jobs that are critical to lifting people out of poverty,” said Dr. Kim at The Private Sector and Ending Poverty conference.
“The extent to which we commit to working with the private sector to foster growth will determine how ambitious we can be for the poorest people in the world.”
The event, attended by a cross-section of private sector companies, academics, think tanks, and foundations, was watched in Pakistan, Ghana, Albania, Venezuela and Colombia, among other countries, and followed on Twitter with #Results4Impact and #wblive.
MADRID -- One thousand days. That's all we have left to meet the Millennium Development Goals, a series of commitments to improve the lives of families in the developing world. I was just in Madrid to attend the United Nations' Chief Executives Board -- the heads of the UN agencies -- and we talked about the importance of setting targets to spur urgent action. Watch the video blog below to learn more.
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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That was the first question up for debate at the Citizen Voices Conference on March 18. And the communal answer was a clear and resounding "yes."
The next question up posed more of a challenge – How do we build our public and private institutions so citizens can access information and influence decisions impacting their own lives? The answer to this was pulled apart for eight hours by technology innovators, development specialists, government officials, academics, civil society representatives, and members of the private sector at this interactive and multilingual conference.
This week in Doha, the marble corridors of the Qatar National Convention Center resonate with voices from around the world. Over half way through the UN Climate Change Conference, as ministers arrive and the political stakes pick up, a sense of greater urgency in the formal negotiations is almost palpable. But in the corridors, negotiations are already leading to deals and dreams and action on the ground.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the discussions by saying we need optimism, because without optimism there are no results. He reminded us all that Superstorm Sandy was a tragic awakening. He reiterated the call for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, a global agreement and 100 billion in climate finance by 2020.
Meanwhile our focus was firmly on the region ...
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Looking at communities across our planet, there is a brutal lack of resilience in our modern lives. Cities have expanded without careful planning into flood- and storm-prone areas, destroying natural storm barriers and often leaving the poor to find shelter in the most vulnerable spots. Droughts, made more frequent by climate change, have taken a toll on crops, creating food shortages.
In the past 30 years, disasters have killed over 2.3 million people, about the population of Houston or all of Namibia.
