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The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA) together make up the World Bank, an international financial organization whose mission is to fight world poverty. The Bank helps client countries achieve sustainable development by harnessing resources and forming partnerships with others, including development institutions and civil society organizations.
Developing countries have made much progress in recent decades. Globally, life expectancy at birth has risen by 20 years over the past 40 years, and adult illiteracy has been cut in half over the past 30 years. Poverty rates have fallen: the proportion of people living in extreme poverty fell from just under 40 percent in 1981 to 21 percent in 2001. In countries that have laid good foundations for growth, indicators of social development are improving. Strong health programs in Brazil, Thailand, and Uganda are controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome), and Thailand has reduced the number of new infections from 140,000 a year in the early 1990s to 30,000 in 2001.
The success stories of many developing countries prove that progress is possible when countries have good policies and the support of partners. But progress has been uneven. Slow growth, low educational achievement, civil disturbances, and poor health remain obstacles for many countries. At the end of 2003, some 38 million adults and children were living with HIV/AIDS—more than 95 percent of them in developing countries and 70 percent of them in Africa. Almost a million new cases emerged in South and East Asia, where more than 7 million people now live with the disease.
To accelerate the development agenda, the global community embraced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight common goals that identify clear targets for eradicating poverty and other sources of human deprivation and for promoting sustainable development by 2015. In September 2000, 189 countries signed the Millennium Declaration.
The agenda is unfinished, and the challenge is immense. Some 2.8 billion people—more than half of the population in developing countries—still live on less than $2 a day, and 1.1 billion of these people live on less than $1 a day. The task of helping these people move from poverty to prosperity while the world’s population continues to grow is enormous. (Figure 1.1 shows poverty rates by region since 1990.)
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