Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

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Ukraine - Human Development Update, February 2023

(Washington, DC, 2023-04-10) World Bank

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties, internal displacement of millions of people, widespread destruction of infrastructure, and disruption of services that are essential to human capital formation and protection. This Ukraine Human Development Update summarizes the cumulative effects of the war, highlights recent government responses, and provides an overview of World Bank support.
Public Services and COVID-19 - Reflections from the Pacific: Sustainable Wage Bills

(Washington, DC, 2022-12) World Bank

The purpose of this note is to identify good practice in public sector management drawn from Pacific Island public service experiences of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences were brought together through a World Bank engagement with Pacific Island countries in 2021 and 2022. The engagement identified five core aspects of Pacific Island public service management in response to COVID-19: trust, preparation, adaptable system settings, adaptable operating models, and sustainable wage bills. This first note in the series of five focuses on the importance of trust. The primary audience is public service leaders in Pacific Islands. The note will also be of interest to anyone working on designing and leading public sector management systems through rapid change, uncertainty and crises.
Disaster Risk Financing: What it is and What it isn’t for Adaptive Social Protection In the Sahel - Debunking Myths About DRF in the Sahel

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11) Lung, Felix

Adaptive safety nets are cash transfer programs that can rapidly increase beneficiary coverage, or the cash amounts they provide in response to disasters. Disaster risk financing (DRF) provides a set of tools and instruments that can efficiently help finance the costs of such responses. In the West Sahel, where chronic food insecurity and vulnerability are high and safety net coverage, data availability, and government fiscal space often remain limited, some of the common approaches to DRF meet their limitations. This note draws out some of these limitations and suggests ways for policymakers to address them. Among these, it suggests that governments in the Sahel focus on building reliable social protection delivery systems before turning to DRF; design DRF strategies that account for continued external assistance; focus first on more frequent, lower severity shocks rather than the extreme ones; and start their DRF engagements with sectoral DRF strategies rather than comprehensive national ones that try to address all disaster risks, costs, and sectors.
The Importance of Designing Gender and Disability Inclusive Laws: A Survey of Legislation in 190 Economies

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-09-12) Braunmiller, Julia Constanze ; Dry, Marie

Women with disabilities face additional barriers to their participation in the economy and society compared to men, with and without disabilities, and relative to nondisabled women, resulting in unequal parental rights, discrimination in their private life and the workplace, reduced employment opportunities, lower earnings, and high exposure to gender-based violence. The legal recognition of multiple forms of discrimination is a vital first step to address and, ultimately, enforce the human rights of women with disabilities and protect them from discriminatory practices. The law is thus one key element to achieve their full inclusion and enable societies to thrive in the long run. This Brief presents data collected by the World Bank’s Women, Business, and the Law project on the legal barriers that women with disabilities face when accessing economic opportunities in 190 economies. The new data suggest that only one-quarter of economies worldwide explicitly protect and promote the rights of women with disabilities.
Gender Wage Gap in Thailand

(Washington, DC, 2022-09) World Bank

The gender wage gap in Thailand is much less significant than in most countries in the world. The average hourly wage among female workers, in fact, slightly surpasses that of males. This highly equitable gender wage pattern is seen at all levels of the wage distribution. Female representation is also quite equal at all levels of wages; the likelihood of finding females in low-wage jobs is as high as in high-wage jobs. One important factor driving this gender wage parity is the higher educational attainment among female workers.
Challenging Entrenched Marital Power in South Africa

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04-29) Arekapudi, Nisha ; Mazoni Silva Martins, Natália

This brief examines more than thirty years of legal reform aimed at removing husbands’ marital power at the expense of their wives from South African legislation. For decades, marital power relegated wives to a position akin to minors, with devastating effects on women’s economic empowerment. Removing the many components of this form of discrimination from national law has required not only a conducive political environment, but also sustained momentum from the women’s rights movement and selective, strategic litigation that challenges the varied effects. Such reforms have directly and positively affected women’s economic inclusion. While efforts to improve gender equality in South Africa are ongoing, the analysis offers important insights on optimal contexts for change, the role women play in advocacy efforts, and the benefits of reform for economic growth.
Closing the Gender Leadership Gap: CRDB - Investing In Women To Increase Competitiveness

(Washington, DC, 2022-03) International Finance Corporation

There is a strong business case for attracting and retaining more women in the financial sector from the board to the workforce. Women contribute to enhanced profitability, innovation, and risk management. Over the course of two decades, numerous studies have been undertaken by investors, corporate governance organizations, consultants, and financial institutions all over the world, which have found “a positive association between board diversity and company performance, investor protection, and/or enhanced decision making” (Zecca 2021). In April 2019, CRDB, a longstanding IFC investment and advisory client, joined the IFC-led Finance2Equal initiative. The program aims to increase women’s participation in the financial sector as leaders, employees, customers, and entrepreneurs, by expanding women’s access to financial services and strengthening career opportunities. Under the initiative, IFC and CRDB co-sponsored a training program to help the bank reduce its gender gap in leadership by preparing women for senior positions. The objective of the training was to enhance CRDB’s pipeline of future women leaders. This training was designed to encourage more women to apply for senior roles at CRDB, and in Tanzania’s financial sector, as a whole (IFC 2020).
Aligning Data Governance with the Social Contract for Data to Promote Value, Trust, and Equity

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-01) World Bank

In a world where data are becoming an integral part of our lives, data governance has become essential to support the production, use and reuse of data in a safe, ethical, and secure manner. In effect, data governance enforces the social contract around data, by applying the principles of trust, value, and equity. This primer provides an overview of the different elements of a data governance framework as discussed in the World Development Report 2021, Data for Better Lives. The implementation of the different elements of the framework will be specific to a country context, informed by local norms, laws, and culture. Using this framework, a series of briefs accompanying this primer, will explore and review the data governance landscape in different regions with a view to facilitating the region’s pathway to a green, resilient, and inclusive recovery.
The Pandemic’s Extensive Reform Agenda: How Can the Development Community Contribute?

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-15) Smets, Lodewijk ; Record, Richard James Lowden

The COVID-19 crisis requires policy reforms on many fronts, from debt sustainability to climate-smart recovery. This Research & Policy brief draws on theory and empirical evidence to explore the opportunities for the international development community to support policy and institutional reform. The focus is on four dimensions of support: conditional financing, policy dialogue, analytical work, and political institutions. While budget support is important to close financing gaps, the Brief argues that high-quality analytical work and policy dialogue may be needed for sustained reform success. Although political institutions determine public policy, the Brief cautions that supporting changes in the political system may lead to unintended consequences. The Research & Policy brief concludes with a discussion and some avenues for future research in this field.
Opportunities to maximize the effectiveness of food and tobacco tax to help address Samoa NCD crisis

(Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank

Samoa is one of the first countries in the Pacific to introduce taxation measures to address Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs). The predicted probability of dying from NCDs between the ages of 30 and 70 years is more than double in Samoa compared to high-income nations in the Pacific region. Over several years, the Government of Samoa has imposed excise taxes on several products including cigarettes, alcohol, and sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs). There are plans to expand excise taxes to unhealthy products in 2023. This includes raising excise taxes on tobacco and SSBs and introducing import duty and/or excise taxes on imported high fat cuts of lamb, syrups, confectionery, biscuits, ice cream, and french fries. Simultaneously, there are plans to reduce and/or waive import duty on selected vegetables, fresh chicken, and bottled water. Therefore, in 2020, a nationally representative survey was conducted to generate baseline data to inform future tax measures.