World Bank looks to systematize growing role in fragile states

WASHINGTON — After more than a year of internal and external consultations, visits to 37 countries, a concept note, multiple drafts, and a launch event that never materialized, the World Bank’s first-ever strategy for fragility, conflict, and violence has been officially approved. “The strategy aims to take stock about where we have made progress and try to systematize it, so we can be even more efficient in our engagement in FCV countries.” --— Franck Bousquet, Fragility, Conflict & Violence Group senior director, World Bank The bank released the new strategy — which covers the years 2020 to 2025 — last week, after it received unanimous endorsement by the bank’s board of directors. The strategy was supposed to be accompanied by a high-level launch event at the Fragility Forum in Washington this week, but the conference was indefinitely postponed due to concerns about the COVID-19 virus. The strategy underscores a significant shift underway at the multilateral development bank as it seeks to confront a changing reality of global poverty. In recent years, the World Bank has increased the amount of funding it is directing to fragile and conflict-affected states, committed to training and deploying more staff to those contexts, and reconsidered its relationship with the humanitarian organizations and United Nations agencies that have typically delivered most of the international assistance to countries in the midst of conflict. The World Bank’s role has historically been to wait until a conflict ends and then to help finance and coordinate a country’s reconstruction. Today, an estimated 48% of people living in poverty are located within fragile and conflict-affected states, though only about 10% of the global population lives in these countries, according to the bank’s latest research. By 2030, that number is expected to increase to 66%. The takeaway for the bank is that it will never be able to achieve one-half of its mission — ending extreme poverty — unless it is willing and able to perform its work in the places where extreme poverty exists. That is much easier said than done, and the new strategy is intended to create a framework for what the bank’s engagement in fragile and conflict-affected countries should look like and how it should take place. “It’s about having an action plan, a strategy that helps us to improve our efficiency on the ground … focusing on personnel, focusing on partnership, focusing on policies, and on programming,” said Franck Bousquet, senior director of the bank’s Fragility, Conflict & Violence Group. “The strategy aims to take stock about where we have made progress and try to systematize it, so we can be even more efficient in our engagement in FCV countries,” Bousquet said in an interview. The key question is what role the World Bank — an institution built to work directly with governments on issues related to long-term development — will play in countries where the government might be part of the problem and where immediate needs might trump long-term development opportunities. Part of the strategy development process has been figuring out what the bank’s comparative advantage is and how it would bring that to bear in FCV contexts. “The strategy is very clear about what are the complementarities between development and humanitarian,” Bousquet said. “We are here to look at the long term, to strengthen institutions, to provide the right policy reform, to be providing support to all groups. And that’s not the short-term response that humanitarians are best to provide,” he said. The bank sees a significant role for itself on the prevention side of fragility and conflict, according to Bousquet. In its financing and policy dialogues with countries, the bank can use its leverage to create incentives for governments to address the grievances that might lead to conflict and violence. “We also bring financing, but financing is only provided with some incentive to really tackle those issues,” Bousquet said. The bank has played a similar role — in partnership with actors like the United Nations Refugee Agency — to provide financing to refugee-hosting countries in ways that create incentives for those countries to adopt more refugee-friendly policies. Humanitarian groups have largely welcomed the bank’s willingness to use its leverage on behalf of displaced populations and to influence the policies that affect them. “Humanitarians typically don’t have the relationships with governments that the World Bank does,” said Lauren Post, senior policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee. That is partly by design. Humanitarian organizations typically ascribe to principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Since the bank is not a humanitarian organization, some observers have asked for greater clarity about how it will decide when and when not to work alongside national governments. “As the Bank engages increasingly in challenging contexts, they will have to make some tough decisions, particularly where governments are party to the conflict or tensions,” Nadia Daar, head of Oxfam International’s Washington, D.C. office, wrote to Devex by email. “This strategy presumes engagement but where will the Bank draw the line? If they decide to engage then they need to explicitly use their leverage to promote positive reforms and improve conditions, ultimately making sure they are part of the solution, not the problem,” she wrote. The humanitarian community has also pushed the bank to pay more attention to partnership and collaboration as it occupies a larger place in the fragility, conflict, and violence realm. The new strategy has been accompanied by a significant uptick in the amount of funding the World Bank is directing to FCV countries. The first significant change occurred during the 18th replenishment of the International Development Association, the bank’s fund for poorest countries, which Bousquet referred to as “the financing arm of the strategy.” In 2016, the institution’s shareholders approved a plan to double the amount of IDA funding for fragile and conflict-affected states, bringing it to $14 billion. The IDA19 replenishment package approved last year included $18.7 billion for FCV countries, and additional funding windows are expected to bring the total to more than $20 billion, according to Bousquet. The funding boost is set to be accompanied by an increase in the number of World Bank staff located in FCV countries. Under the IDA19 agreement, the bank will deploy at least 150 additional staff at the so-called GE level — which includes positions such as program managers, technical specialists, and economists — to fragile and conflict-affected situations and nearby locations by June 2023. Over the last five years, the number of bank staff in FCV countries has increased to 888 from 705, according to the strategy, with the biggest staffing increases occurring in countries where the bank has also increased its financing, such as Afghanistan, Lebanon, Congo, and Mali. The bank recently hosted a “massive job fair,” Bousquet said, aimed at hiring 100 people for FCV settings. For staff serving in FCV countries, the bank plans to introduce new career incentives such as guaranteeing their next placement location and giving strong consideration to FCV experience in the managerial selection process. The institution is also “revamping” its Young Professionals Program to emphasize fieldwork, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. “We have not been waiting for the strategy to think about the operationalization. The fact that, actually, IDA19 is one of the key financing vehicles of the strategy and IDA18 was before a key element helps us to move into the implementation already,” Bousquet said.