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When conflicts end, the tragic impact of lives lost, damages, and the countless needs of people left in its wake are overwhelmingly visible. There are also other long-lasting and damaging consequences that are less visible, such as conflict pollution. Conflict pollution as it is called, occurs when battling forces leave behind military waste, landmines, or hazardous chemicals.

Last summer, catastrophic flooding inundated parts of Europe and governments will bear much of the cost. Insurance instruments could help to close the financing gap posed by natural disasters.

  The Richtersveld Community Conservancy on the south border of the Richtersveld National Park in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. Photo: John Hogg/World Bank  This week I was at the G7 meeting in France’s northern city of Metz, discussing biodiversity with Environment Ministers from the Group of Seven ...

Paris Peace Forum. © Ibrahim Ajaja/World Bank [[tweetable]]This week marks 100 years since the end of World War I. One hundred years since an armistice encouraged battling sides to lay down their arms and usher in peace.[[/tweetable]] Many of us – the lucky ones – still enjoy peace. We go ...

Brazil has committed to implementing actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030, in comparison to 2005 levels.

The ICP blog series explores ideas and issues under the International Comparison Program umbrella – including innovations in price and data collection, discussions on purpose and methodology, as well the use of purchasing power parities in the growing world of development data. Authors from across the globe, whether ICP practitioners or ...

Let’s start with a little quiz. Grab a piece of paper and pencil.   What’s the share of legal immigrants in the US population? (or you can choose the Germany, UK, Italy, Sweden or France).  A legal immigrant is defined as someone living legally in the country and born abroad. 

This page in: Français Across European countries, women continue to earn less than men. Looking at data for full-time working women across 30 countries, we find that women would have needed an average raise of 19 percent of their hourly wage to match male wages. Take France, for example, where ...

Allô École! training for parents, primary school, Tshikapa, DRC. (Photo: Ornella Nsoki / Moonshot Global,  Sandra Gubler / Voto Mobile Inc.,  Samy Ntumba / La Couronne) Mobile solutions for better governance in education Let’s look at these pictures together: villagers examining a poster, teachers putting a similar poster on the wall, ...

View a slideshow of photos by Lieve Blancquaert here Ed’s note: This guest blog is by Dirk Wouters, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Belgium to the United States of America in Washington DC   A Kenyan mother seated in the hallway of a hospital, holding a newborn. She looks troubled, ...

On a chilly October day in 2015, 24-year-old Rami Anis boarded a rubber boat in the Aegean Sea in Turkey. His destination was Europe and his goal was a better life away from war and hardship. Looking at the people around him on the boat, he was horrified. They were ...

As a former country manager in Benin, my team and I advised the national administration on the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) Project Law then under consideration and engaged in PPPs. This effort took place after the private sector, both domestic and international, made a strong commitment to finance large infrastructure programs. ...

Syrian refugee students listen to their school teacher during math classes.  Photo © Dominic Chavez/World Bank ​In Europe, the year 2015 will be remembered as the year of the “refugee crisis.” Hundreds of thousands of refugees have crossed treacherous waters and borders to flee war and persecution in Syria and ...

Participants at the 13th FCPF Carbon Fund meeting in Brussels, Belgium Credits: FCPF Carbon Fund With all eyes on Paris climate meetings in December, we are at a critical moment to show that our efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation are moving from concept to reality.The World Bank's Forest Carbon ...

More than 700 million people live in extreme poverty around the world. If that number seems daunting, then consider this: 1.1 billion people – more than three times the population of the United States – live without electricity. So it goes without saying that ending energy poverty is a key ...

Also available in: Français | العربية   A boat trip from Port Elizabeth to Kingstown, in the Caribbean country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, is a one-hour trip that locals take several times a day. It was during one of these journeys that the boat of Kamara Jerome, a ...

At the World Bank Group/IMF Spring Meetings, 42 finance and development ministers discussed phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, putting a price on carbon and mobilizing the trillions of dollars in finance needed for a smooth, orderly transition to a low-carbon economy.

Leaders of the three hardest-hit countries in West Africa issued a plea for help battling Ebola at a high-level meeting on the crisis Thursday on the eve of the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings.

Also available in Français | Español | 中文 In January, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim urged the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos to look closely at a young, promising form of finance for climate-smart development: green bonds. The green bond market had surpassed US$10 billion ...

Last week the New York Times featured an editorial suggesting that the World Bank should become a remittance center. Remittances are the "largest and arguably most effective antipoverty effort in the world.....financed by the poor themselves..., ” it stated. “But the cost to transfer those billions is likely to rise ...