10 things you never knew about the world bank

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A small brochure, which illustrates The World Bank's work with simple facts.

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Page 1: 10 Things You Never Knew About The World Bank

THINGS YOU NEVERKNEW ABOUTTHE WORLDBANK

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CTHE W

D R A M

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CHANGEDE WORLD BANK’S PRIORITIES HAVE

The World Bank’s work in more than one hundred

countries is challenging. But its mission is simple:

to help reduce poverty. Over the past 20 years, the

Bank’s focus has changed and so has its approach.

It is now addressing newer issues like gender, com-

munity-driven development and indigenous peo-

ples, and its support for social services like health,

nutrition, education, and pensions has grown from

5 percent in 1980 to 22 percent in 2003. Today,

countries themselves are coming to the World

Bank with their own plans for helping poor people

and the Bank has adopted new ways of working

with them.

A M AT I C A L LY

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JOHN ISAAC/WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY

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Education is central to development. The Bank hascommitted some US$33 billion in loans and credits for education, and currently finances 157 projects in83 countries. The Bank works closely with nationalgovernments, United Nations agencies, donors, civilsociety organizations, and other partners to supportdeveloping countries in their efforts to reach the Edu-cation for All goals — that all children, especially girlsand disadvantaged children, are enrolled in and able tocomplete a primary education by 2015. A good exam-ple of the Bank’s lending in this area is the India Dis-trict Primary Education Program, which specificallytargets girls in districts where female literacy rates arebelow the national average. Bank funding for this pro-gram is now up to US$1.3 billion and serves more than60 million students in 271 low-literacy districts in 18of the 29 Indian states. In Brazil, El Salvador, andTrinidad and Tobago, Bank projects have helped localcommunities increase their influence in the quality of education for their children by enabling them toevaluate the performance of local schools and teachers.

The World Bank isthe world’s largestexternal funder ofeducation

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2Each day, 14,000 more people become newly infectedwith the HIV virus. Half of them are between the ages of15 and 24. HIV/AIDS is rapidly reversing many of thesocial and economic gains made by developing coun-tries over the past 50 years. As a co-sponsor of UNAIDS,the umbrella group that coordinates the global responseto the epidemic, the World Bank has committed, in thelast few years, more than US$1.6 billion to combatingthe spread of HIV/AIDS around the world. It has beenone of the largest financial supporters of HIV/AIDS pro-grams in developing countries. The Bank has pledgedthat no country with an effective HIV/AIDS strategy will go without funding. In partnership with African and Caribbean governments, the Bank launched theMulti-Country HIV/AIDS Program (MAP), which makessignificant resources available to civil society organ-izations and communities. Many have developed highly innovative HIV/AIDS approaches, from which others arelearning and adapting to local conditions. In 2002,MAP made available US$1 billion to help countries in Africa expand their national prevention, care, andtreatment programs. Additionally, every year the Bankcommits an average of US$1.3 billion in new lendingfor health, nutrition, and population projects in thedeveloping world.

The World Bankis the world’slargest externalfunder of thefight againstHIV/AIDS

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TREVOR SAMSON/WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY

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WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY

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Corruption is a roadblock to development: it taxespoor people by diverting public resources from thosewho need them most. It also undermines investment,human capital, growth, voice and equality. Since 1996,the Bank has launched hundreds of governance andanticorruption programs and initiatives in nearly 100 developing countries. Initiatives range from dis-closure of assets by government officials and publicexpenditure reforms, to training judges and teachinginvestigative reporting to journalists. The Bank's com-mitment to addressing corruption has helped spear-head a global response to the problem, while itcontinues to integrate anticorruption measures into itsanalytical and operational work. It is committed toensuring that the projects it finances are free from corruption, setting up stringent guidelines and a hot-line for corruption complaints; about 100 entities havebeen declared ineligible to be awarded Bank-financedcontracts. Further, the World Bank Institute has devel-oped a major knowledge, learning, and data center ongovernance and anti-corruption.

3The World Bank isa leader in the fightagainst corruptionworldwide

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In 1996, the World Bank and the International MonetaryFund launched the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries(HIPC) Initiative — the first comprehensive effort to cutthe external debt of the world’s poorest, most debt-laden countries. Today, 26 countries are receiving debtrelief projected to amount to US$40 billion over time.The HIPC Initiative, combined with other forms of debtrelief, will cut by two-thirds the external debt in thesecountries — lowering their debt levels to below the over-all average for developing countries. As part of the initia-tive, these countries are redirecting government fundsfreed up by debt relief, into programs to cut poverty. Forexample, Rwanda has set targets to hire teachers andincrease primary school enrollments. Honduras plans todeliver basic primary and maternal/child health care to atleast 100,000 people in poor communities. Cameroon isstrengthening the fight against HIV/AIDS by, amongother things, expanding education to promote the use ofcondoms by high-risk groups.

The World Bankstrongly supportsdebt relief

4ERIC

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ERIC MILLER/WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY

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HAROLD CASTRO, CI

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5Since 1988, the Bank has become one of the largestinternational funders of biodiversity projects. Eventhough biodiversity loss is a global concern, the great-est impacts are felt by rural people in developing coun-tries where they are most dependent on naturalresources for food, shelter, medicine, income, employ-ment, and their cultural identity. For this reason, theBank has joined Conservation International, the GlobalEnvironment Facility, the MacArthur Foundation, andthe Japanese government in a fund that contributes tobetter protection of developing countries’ biodiversityhotspots. Sixty percent of all terrestrial species’ diversi-ty can be found in these highly threatened regions,which cover only 1.4 percent of the planet’s total surface area. Concern for the environment is central to the Bank’s poverty reduction mission. In addition to environmental assessments and safeguard policies,the Bank's environment strategy focuses on climatechange, forests, water resources, and biodiversity. Currently, the Bank’s portfolio of projects with clear environmental objectives amounts to around US$13 billion.

The World Bank is one of the largestinternational funders of biodiversity projects

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6During the past six years, the Bank has joined a largearray of partners in the global fight against poverty. Forexample, to help reduce the effects of global warmingit collaborated with governments and the private sectorto launch the new BioCarbon Fund, and with the Inter-national Emissions Trading Association (IETA) tolaunch the Community Development Carbon Fund(CDCF). The Bank is also working with the WorldWildlife Fund to protect forests. With the Food andAgriculture Organization (FAO) and the United NationsDevelopment Programme (UNDP), it sponsors therenowned Consultative Group on International Agricul-tural Research — which mobilizes cutting-edge scienceto reduce hunger and poverty, improve human nutri-tion and health, and protect the environment. Throughthe Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, the Bankworks with 27 other multilateral and donor organiza-tions that support microfinance to help build top-qual-ity, full-service financial systems in developingcountries to serve their poorest citizens. A partnershipto defeat river blindness throughout Africa has success-fully prevented 700,000 cases of blindness, opened 25million hectares of arable land to cultivation, and treatsmore than 35 million people a year for the disease.

The WorldBank works in partnershipmore than everbefore

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CHRISTOFFEL-BLINDENMISSION

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7While most people in the developed world take infrastructurefor granted, it remains a dreamed-of luxury in many parts ofthe world. Almost 1.4 billion people in developing countrieslack access to clean water. Some 3 billion live without basicsanitation or electricity. Infrastructure is not simply about theconstruction of large projects. It is about delivering basic serv-ices that people need for everyday life. It is about upgradingslums and providing roads to connect the poorest urban areas.Infrastructure is also an important part of the World Bank’sefforts to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals.Delivering safe water has a direct impact on reducing childmortality. Providing communities with electricity avoidswomen and children spending long hours fetching firewoodfor cooking and heating, and gives them more time for otheractivities. Children, especially, are able to devote more time toschoolwork. In Morocco, a Bank-supported road projecthelped increase girls’ enrollment in schools from 28 percent to68 percent. Infrastructure also connects communities to theworld around them. A rural electrification project in Ecuador ishelping improve living standards and broaden opportunities bylinking poor communities to telecommunications, electricity,the Internet, and business services.

The World Bank ishelping bring cleanwater, electricity and transport to poor people

DOMINIC SANSONI/WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY

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8The growth of civil society over the past two decadeshas been one of the most significant trends in interna-tional development. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)are not only influential in the global development policy debate, but have become important channels for social service delivery and innovative developmentprograms. CSO involvement in Bank-funded projectshas risen from 21 percent of all projects in 1990 toabout 72 percent in 2003. The World Bank is alsoincreasingly supporting such groups as communitygroups, NGOs, trade unions and faith-based organiza-tions through greater information sharing, skills train-ing, and grant funding. Every year, the Bank providesgrant funds to CSOs at the country level to rebuild war-torn communities, social services and communitydevelopment. Its civil society staff in more than 70country offices consult and collaborate with CSOs on arange of issues, from AIDS prevention and micro-creditdevelopment to fighting corruption and protecting theenvironment.

Civil societyplays an everlarger role inthe Bank’swork

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WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY

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WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY

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9The Bank is currently active in 40 conflict-affectedcountries, working with government and non-govern-ment partners, local and international, to assist war-torn populations, resume peaceful development, and prevent relapse into violence. The Bank's workaddresses a range of needs, including jump-startingthe economy, repairing and rebuilding war-damagedinfrastructure and institutions, clearing land mines,reintegrating ex-combatants and displaced popula-tions, and targeting programs to vulnerable groupssuch as widows and children. The Bank has also devel-oped tools and research to better analyze and under-stand the sources of conflict, and to promoteeconomic growth and poverty reduction in a way thatreduces the risk of future violence. Among the wide-ranging and innovative projects supported by the Bankare demobilization of ex-combatants in the GreatLakes Region; infrastructure reconstruction and com-munity empowerment efforts in Afghanistan; address-ing psycho-social trauma in war-affected communitiesof Bosnia and Herzegovina; rehabilitation of streetchildren in the Democratic Republic of Congo; earlyreconstruction through a community empowermentand local governance project in Timor-Leste; and aprogram to protect the property of Colombiansuprooted by conflict.

The World Bankhelps countriesemerging fromconflict

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Conversations with 60,000 poor people in 60countries, as well as our day-to-day work, have taughtthe Bank that poverty is about more than inadequateincome or even low human development. It is alsoabout voicelessness and powerlessness. It is about vul-nerability to abuse and corruption. It is about lack offundamental freedom of action, choice, and opportu-nity. The Bank believes that people who live in povertyshould not be treated as a liability, but as a resourceand a partner in the fight against poverty. An empow-ering approach to poverty reduction puts poor peopleat the center of development and creates the condi-tions where they can gain increased control over theirlives through better access to information, inclusionand participation in decision-making, accountability,and local organizational capacity. Today, the Bank sup-ports a variety of community-driven development proj-ects with funding commitments of more than US$2billion. Other ways of investing in poor people'sempowerment include social accountability mecha-nisms in Bank operations, community-managed schoolprograms, judicial reform and access to justice pro-grams, and the promotion of citizen scorecards to ratebasic services.

The World Bank is responding to thevoices of poor people

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CURT CARNEMARK-WORLD BANK PHOTO LIBRARY

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printed on recycled paper

September 2003

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