Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes
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Publication
Protecting Women from Violence: Bridging the Implementation Gap Between Law and Practice
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12)For years, Marta was abused by her husband. Eventually she reached out to the police, the Carabineros de Chile – who are tasked with helping survivors of domestic violence. The police referred Marta to a public prosecutor for immediate protection and Marta and her daughter were placed in a shelter run by a government-funded non-profit organization Fundación Honra. With Fundación Honra’s help Marta eventually rented an apartment and got a job. Marta’s story is not unique to Chile. Many women worldwide who experience violence do not readily report it or seek help. This is often due to the lack of quality services and adequate support networks, as well as social and cultural norms.2 Survivors of violence3 may also feel the police are unwilling or unable to help.4 A study examining Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) data across 24 countries found that 40 percent of women experiencing gender-based violence disclosed it to someone, but only 7 percent reported to a formal source.5 In many cases, even when women seek help from the authorities, the response can be inadequate. Recognizing the need to enhance efforts to address violence against women, governments have started implementing recommendations and adopting additional protection measures and services set out in international and regional instruments including the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Belem do Pará Convention and the Maputo Protocol. According to these legal frameworks, adopting implementation measures aiming at increasing effectiveness of legislation is part of the State’s duty to act in protecting women from violence. -
Publication
Exporting Financial Services in Latin America and the Caribbean
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-09)According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), trade in services has become the most dynamic segment of world trade, growing more quickly than trade in goods. While travel remains the most exported service both worldwide and in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), other services are becoming relevant for both developed and developing economies. Among them, financial services is one of the most important categories in terms of value. Worldwide, the value of financial services exports rose in real terms between 2008 and 2017. Nevertheless, this global trend of rising exports of financial services was not reflected in LAC, where they contracted between 2008 and 2016. The economies of Latin America and the Caribbean have significant potential to export financial services. To take advantage of this opportunity, governments in the region can work on a variety of fronts to raise their economies’ competitiveness in this area. Two specific challenges are the availability of human capital and electronic infrastructure. The former refers to the limited number of professionals that, in addition to Spanish, speak the language of the importing economies and are adequately educated and experienced in the areas associated with services exports. The latter refers to the electronic infrastructure and digital systems that facilitate the export of financial services, but also the high cost to develop communication schemes in the region. Consequently, LAC’s export dynamism in financial services will depend on long-term public policies and public-private strategies with clear objectives for promoting human capital and a competitive digital ecosystem. -
Publication
Wastewater? From Waste to Resource in a Circular Economy Context: Latin America and the Caribbean Region
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-08-30)The World Bank, with contributions from the CAF - Development Bank of Latin America, is promoting a paradigm shift, moving away from considering wastewater as a waste and recognizing its inherent value. As part of this collaboration, both organizations have co-organized sessions with key stakeholders at the World Water Forum and Latinosan, to encourage the water community to move towards a circular economy model. This joint note summarizes the main findings of this collaborative work. -
Publication
Spatial Heterogeneity and Household Life Cycle in the Multidimensional Poverty Index: The Case of Colombia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06-14)This note discusses the evolution of the MPI in Colombia since 2010 and describes some of the challenges associated with the spatial heterogeneity of multidimensional poverty across urban and rural areas, and the relationship between life cycle and the evolution of the MPI over time. Also, this note opens a discussion that has not been yet addressed by the literature on how to update the indicators in the MPI once these are no longer capturing significant deprivations. -
Publication
Colombia: Can a Management and Information System Improve Education Quality?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-28)The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank funded the development of a Management & Information System to monitor the quality of the education system in Colombia. This system builds on existing monitoring tools, which focus on outcome measures such as test scores but do not capture intermediate quality indicators that can shed light on how learning outcomes are achieved. The overarching purpose of this system is to foster improvement in the education system by informing the decision-making and everyday activities of education practitioners and policymakers. This can be achieved by: (i) gathering detailed and relevant information about activities within schools and (ii) managing the information efficiently and making it accessible to users to enable them to analyze, understand, and provide evidence-based recommendations on how to improve education quality. This monitoring system is not intended to be an accountability mechanism for schools but rather a management tool for stakeholders to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the education system and take appropriate action. -
Publication
Knowledge Exchanges on Integrated Urban Water Management Briefing Note 1—January 2019
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01)This note describes the outcomes of a June 2018 knowledge exchange visit to study urban water management and urban renewal experiences in Brazil. Participants included 23 country representatives and 9 World Bank staff from Ethiopia, Ghana, and Indonesia who visited the two Brazilian cities of São Paulo and Teresina. São Paulo is a mega-city that has addressed serious urban water issues—from water scarcity and flooding to informal settlements and water supply, sanitation, and pollution—over the past couple decades. Teresina, meanwhile, is a medium-sized town that has integrated several sectors in the urban area at project level. Both cities clearly showed how integration beyond traditional borders between sectors and active stakeholder involvement can lead to significant additional benefits for urban inhabitants. Participants learned from these implementation experiences and took home clear guidance and next steps to be incorporated through ongoing World Bank projects. -
Publication
Haiti: Can Preconditions for RBF be Established in Fragile States?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-09)The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank provided funding to the Government of Haiti with the goal of establishing the preconditions for the adoption of RBF in the Haitian National Ministry of Education and Professional Training (Ministère de l'Education National et de la Formation Professionnelle, MENFP). To this end, the grant funded the development of a quality assurance system (QAS) based on specific standards for the most important dimensions of educational quality in the country. The idea was to include clear indicators for each quality dimension that would make it possible to measure education results on the ground. The grant also funded a series of complementary activities aimed at strengthening the technical capacity of MENFP staff to define and measure quality. By developing a QAS for all primary schools in the country, the grant aimed to improve governance, enhance the data systems needed to measure results, and establish the preconditions necessary to introduce an RBF mechanism in the education sector in Haiti. -
Publication
Haiti: Can Preconditions for Results-Based Financing be Established in Fragile States?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-09)The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank provided funding to the Government of Haiti with the goal of establishing the preconditions for the adoption of RBF in the Haitian National Ministry of Education and Professional Training (Ministère de l'Education National et de la Formation Professionnelle, MENFP). To this end, the grant funded the development of a quality assurance system (QAS) based on specific standards for the most important dimensions of educational quality in the country. The idea was to include clear indicators for each quality dimension that would make it possible to measure education results on the ground. The grant also funded a series of complementary activities aimed at strengthening the technical capacity of MENFP staff to define and measure quality. By developing a QAS for all primary schools in the country, the grant aimed to improve governance, enhance the data systems needed to measure results, and establish the preconditions necessary to introduce an RBF mechanism in the education sector in Haiti. -
Publication
Gender Differences in Poverty in Colombia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08)This note presents the gender poverty profiles for Colombia using a lifecycle approach. In Colombia, as in the vast majority of countries around the world, girls and boys are consistently poorer than adults and seniors. Notwithstanding, the difference on poverty rates between women and men during their reproductive age in Colombia is around 6 p.p. while in the world is around 2 p.p. Another interesting finding is that the likelihood of being poor diminishes with formal education, for both women and men. Nevertheless, as the level of formal education increases, the share of women among the poor do so also. This note is organized as follows: section one presents the poverty rates for women and men, by education level, marital status, location, and employment type. Section two presents the results of the lifecycle approach. The authors present the gender poverty profile when variables as age, demographic, and economic composition are combined with gender, to define the profiles. And finally, section three presents some final remarks. -
Publication
Distributional Effects of Investments in Road Infrastructure: The Case of Colombia's 4th Generation Concession Program
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08)Estimating ex-ante distributional impacts of road infrastructure is increasingly important to better understand the poverty effects of these investments. This note presents such analysis for the ongoing 4th generation (4G) road concessions program in Colombia, which involves the concession of 40 new roads and the transformation of 8,170 kilometers of road network. An ex-ante evaluation of the program suggests that 180,000 jobs will be created and that moderate and extreme poverty would decline by 0.5 and 0.3 percentage points, respectively.