The World Bank has opened a new Global Center on Conflict, Security and Development to make its financial support and expertise work better for poor and vulnerable people living in fragile countries.
It estimates that more than 1.5 billion people living in countries afflicted by repeated cycles of conflict and violence.
The center will also help to establish a stronger community of practice and knowledge-sharing across the worldwide network of practitioners who work on development issues confronting fragile and conflict-affected countries.
The Bank says that more than 30 countries, mostly in Africa, have been or are affected by conflicts and that its new center in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, will allow the Bank to provide their communities with more flexible, transparent help.
At its opening ceremony in Nairobi, attended by Sierra Leone’s Minister of Finance, government ministers, UN and development agencies, and NGOs active in post-conflict development, the Bank said the world is now witnessing a number of countries that are navigating their way out of war and conflict.
Sierra Leone, Liberia, Timor Leste, and Bosnia by resuming education, health, and other key social services, and creating stable, elected governments which in turn have drawn development support and local and foreign investors.
However, according to the Bank, millions of people across Africa, South Asia, and other regions still face perilous, isolated, lives in war-torn situations.
“Political and criminal violence should not be the chains that shackle people for life. We know violence knows no borders. We know the impact of violence can last generations,” said Dr. Caroline Anstey, the World Bank’s Managing Director for Operations, who officially opened the center.
“Our challenge is to provide more support and make development work more effectively in fragile and often violent places. Not to do so would be abandoning our development mission.”
Anstey noted that the Bank had mobilized more than 690 staff to work in fragile countries across the globe, and had provided more than US$5.9 billion in zero-interest in reconstruction support to these countries since 2000 from the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries, the International Development Association (IDA), and the Bank-administered State-and Peace-Building Fund, which fosters peace-building in fragile and conflict countries.
The Nairobi center, which will operate out of the headquarters of Africa’s leading affordable housing NGO, Shelter Afrique, will also unveil a new online and face-to-face knowledge web portal called The Hive to connect practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and networks of people and organizations working on violence, conflict, and fragility around the world.
ENDS