Publication: Securing Development
Loading...
Published
2009-01-08
ISSN
Date
2018-04-05
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank, remarked that the traumas of fragile states and the interconnections of globalization require our generation to recognize anew the nexus among economics, governance, and security. Most wars are now conflicts within states, and fragile states account for most of them. The "R" in IBRD has a new meaning: reconstructing Afghanistan, Cambodia, Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, the Palestinian territories, the Solomon Islands, Southern Sudan, Timor-Leste, and other lands of conflict. One billion people live in fragile states. Zoellick provided ten priorities toward fragile states: 1) first, focus on building legitimacy of the state; 2) provide security; 3) building rule of law and legal order; 4) bolster local and national ownership; 5) ensure economic stability – as a foundation for growth and opportunity; 6) pay attention to the political economy; 7) crowd in the private sector; 8) coordinate across institutions and actors; 9) consider the regional context; 10) recognize the long-term commitment. He reviewed these principles in practice for Afghanistan, Haiti, and Liberia.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Zoellick, Robert B.. 2009. Securing Development. Delivered at United States Institute for Peace, "Passing the Baton" Conference;. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29635 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Breaking the Conflict Trap : Civil War and Development Policy(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003)Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.Publication Remarks at the African Union Summit, Addis Ababa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-01-31)Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank, addressed the challenges and opportunities for World Bank Group cooperation with the African Union. He discussed the following topics: (i) Millennium Development Goals have become critical for social development in Africa; (ii) growth and opportunity for Sub-Saharan Africa; (iii) natural resource development; (iv) post-conflict countries and those in fragile situations; and (v) the danger of high energy and food prices.Publication Creating Jobs in Africa's Fragile States : Are Value Chains an Answer?(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-06-12)What is the relationship between employment and conflict in fragile states? Although this question cannot be definitively answered, a large body of research suggests that in countries emerging from conflict, peace is likelier to endure if growth can be rapidly restored and translated into economic opportunities for large segments of the population. With a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, this report attempts to address the challenge of employment and conflict in fragile states. First, it reviews employment- creation activities in fragile and conflict-affected environments to see which approaches appear most promising. Second, it presents specific recommendations for an employment-generation strategy over the medium term. The report argues that in Sub-Saharan Africa, where almost three-quarters of the labor force still works in agriculture, agricultural value chains may have the greatest potential to diversify rural economies, raise household incomes, and thereby contribute to stability. The core of value chain development involves strengthening relationships a critical task in fragile and post- conflict environments, where trust and social cohesion have been shattered. The argument made by this report is developed as follows: the remainder of this chapter briefly defines fragility and summarizes current thinking about its relationship to economic development. It then concludes with a brief discussion of the historical roots of fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa and the implications of this trajectory for the region's current and future development. The second chapter reviews prevailing approaches to employment in fragile and conflict-affected environments. The third chapter examines current and emerging practice directed at restoring private sector activity. It briefly reviews the World Bank's approach to private sector development in four post- conflict countries and then introduces new arguments for earlier and bolder efforts to restore economies and generate employment. Chapter four concludes with recommendations for building on this emerging practice.Publication Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in the Kivu Provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo : Insights from Former Combatants(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-09)Ending the period of conflict, violence and insecurity in Eastern DRC would contribute tremendously to addressing the high levels of ongoing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV). This study has been conducted in partnership with the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) vivo international, to determine individual motivations, as well as strategic or tactical aspects of sexual violence of different armed groups and their leadership. SGBV is a complex problem requiring an integrated and multi-sectoral response, even more so in a fragile environment with ongoing conflict, such as in Eastern DRC. Responses to violence against women need to address, among others: health sector including physical and mental health issues, the criminal-justice sector, economic empowerment, community development (promoting equitable access to resources for women and men), prevention of violence (e.g., through formal and informal education), and advocacy at the community, national and international levels. Any effective response must combine enforcing laws and prosecuting perpetrators to break the cycle of impunity, while addressing the individual and societal wounds, and working to prevent a normalization and recurrence of sexual violence.Publication Regional Initiative in Support of the Horn of Africa(Washington, DC, 2014-10-23)The Horn of Africa (HoA) region has many security and development challenges whose origins and consequences go well beyond the borders of individual countries. It is also a region with many human assets and resource endowments, and some of the most dynamic economies in the world. Despite its numerous challenges, the Horn of Africa offers significant potential to address cross-border issues that can help transform its countries and the region. This paper describes a World Bank Group (WBG) initiative to address some of the key drivers of instability in the HoA and promote development in the area. The initiative is intended to build on and complement the large country and regional programs the WBG and other partners are already supporting in the HoA, bringing value by addressing a number of issues which demand cross-border collaborative solutions to reducing fragility and instability. The central rationale to this initiative is that WBG cannot effectively support the elimination of extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity in the region without engaging more intensively and creatively in addressing very difficult development problems, including those linked to insecurity and vulnerability. The WBG package totals $1.8 billion to be committed over approximately 24 months, with about $600 million investments from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and an estimated $200 million in guarantees from the Multilateral Guarantee Investment Agency (MIGA). The initiative builds on two previous programs aimed at similar issues in the Great Lakes Region (May 2013) and the Sahel (November 2013), efforts that recognize the link between security and development, and the importance of giving hope to vulnerable citizens, including women and children, that they can overcome poverty and deprivation.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Housing Subsidies for Refugees(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-22)Refugees require assistance for basic needs like housing but local host communities may feel excluded from that assistance, potentially affecting community relations. This study experimentally evaluates the effect of a housing assistance program for Syrian refugees in Jordan on both the recipients and their neighbors. The program offered full rental subsidies and landlord incentives for housing improvements, but saw only moderate uptake, in part due to landlord reluctance. The program improved short-run housing quality and lowered housing expenditures, but did not yield sustained economic benefits, partly due to redistribution of aid. The program unexpectedly led to a deterioration in child socio-emotional well-being, and also strained relations between Jordanian neighbors and refugees. In all, housing subsidies had limited measurable benefits for refugee well-being while worsening social cohesion, highlighting the possible need for alternative forms of aid.Publication Regional Poverty and Inequality Update: Latin America and the Caribbean, October 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-23)This brief summarizes recent facts related to poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the latest wave of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for LAC (SEDLAC). This brief was produced by the Poverty Global Practice in the LAC Region of the World Bank.Publication Ukraine Country Environmental Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01)The objective of the Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) is to assess the adequacy and performance of the policy, legal, and institutional framework for environmental management in Ukraine, in light of the decentralization process of environmental governance and wider reform objectives, and to provide recommendations to government to address the key gaps identified. Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe and has a population of 43 million, the majority of whom live in urban areas. It is a lower middle income country, with the services, industry and agriculture sectors being main contributors to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Ukraine faces a number of environmental challenges, as identified in its National Environmental Strategy 2020 (NES). Key among these are: air pollution; quality of water resources and land degradation; solid waste management; biodiversity loss; human health issues associated with environmental risk factors; in addition to climate change. The scope of Ukrainian environmental legislation is quite broad and comprehensive (more than 300 legal acts) and covers most areas of environmental protection and natural resources management. However, the environmental legislation faces a number of weaknesses:The environmental legislation is largely declaratory in nature and does not have all the essential enforcement mechanisms for the implementation of legal acts and international agreements; Many of the acts are not coordinated with each other; and Legislation undergoes limited analysis of its impact—for example, no in-depth analysis such as Regulatory Impact Analysis is conducted for proposed pieces of legislation.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Thailand Monthly Economic Monitor, October 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-22)Fiscal conditions remained stable, with a modest widening of the deficit to 3.1 percent of GDP. New stimulus measures are expected to support short-term demand without breaching the public debt ceiling. Inflation stayed negative, reflecting lower energy and food prices amid subdued domestic demand. The central bank kept the policy rate unchanged, citing limited policy space. Thailand’s growth momentum has slowed further as manufacturing activity and services weakened as projected. Tourism remained subdued, largely due to fewer Chinese visitors. Goods exports also slowed as earlier front-loaded orders faded, particularly in agriculture and industrial goods. The Thai baht depreciated in early October as the US dollar appreciated and the current account turned negative.