The spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have little of the drama of peace negotiations. They are often dominated by technical and technocratic questions concerning the intricacies of international finance. But for the poorest people in the world, the decisions made at these meetings are matters of life and death.
Since the 1990s, the World Bank has facilitated a dramatic decline in extreme poverty globally, from more than 1 in 3 people living in extreme poverty in 1990 to less than 1 in 10 today.
But fragile and conflict-affected countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar, have seen the opposite trend: In those places, extreme poverty is growing, and by 2030, they will be home to an estimated 59% of all people living in extreme poverty. The convergence of conflict, climate change, and economic shocks has left more than 300 million people dependent on humanitarian aid to survive.
This week’s meetings in Washington offer an opportunity for the World Bank to bridge this gap by revamping its approach to extreme poverty. This will require more imagination than we have historically seen from the development and humanitarian communities.
But if the bank can break with traditional development frameworks and improve its reach, scale, and sustainability, it will be able to better support those who need it the most.
In stable states, development economics now has a playbook beyond the Washington Consensus, marked by free market principles and deregulation; international financial institutions now support sustainable and inclusive growth models. But in crisis-affected states, where effective humanitarian action is the first step on the road to development, the World Bank’s policy agenda is much less well developed.
The World Bank itself has recognised this. The bank’s new evolution road map, led by its president, Ajay Banga, recognises the urgent need to focus on fragility, conflict, and climate change—among other global challenges—to achieve its mission to eradicate poverty on a livable planet. But it still needs a concrete plan.
Historically, the World Bank has relied on robust government partnerships. Yet, as the landscape of poverty changes, it will need to adopt a more flexible approach.
The bank should expand delivery of its services through nongovernmental partners, which can often better access communities in need. This is particularly important in crisis settings where a government may not be able to reach parts of the country.
For example, my organisation, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), has successfully partnered with Gavi, the global organisation that seeks to improve access to vaccines, alongside African-led civil society groups in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan.
As of February, our partnership has administered more than 1 million doses of lifesaving vaccines to children. Prior to the programme, the IRC could access only 16% of targeted communities in the Horn of Africa. Now, we are able to reach 77% of those areas.
The World Bank also needs a plan to scale up its operations. This requires not just building up capacity but also reducing strains on national systems such as hospital networks, which are often stretched thin during a crisis.
Humanitarian organisations such as the IRC have had success reducing acute malnutrition among children by partnering with community health workers to diagnose cases and administer treatment instead of adding to the caseload of hospitals.
It will be crucial for the bank to ensure that its programmes can sustain any progress they make. This will require real, not rhetorical, localisation: shifting power to local responders and building trust with them so that they can lead and deliver in aid efforts.
