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Middle East & North Africa |
Human development & poverty reduction | |
| Introduction |
Even under conditions of accelerating gdp growth, special interventions may
be needed to ensure that poor or marginalized groups benefit from economic
growth. Hence, a significant proportion of operational work during the year
supported MENA governments' strategies to address the impoverishing effects of
inadequate or insufficiently accessible health care and to respond creatively to the
special needs of poor communities, including rural populations where poverty is
often disproportionately high.
In the health sector, rapid population growth and constrained government budgets have created an urgent need both to improve the efficiency with which health care resources are deployed and to expand basic preventive and curative services. A $90 million IDA credit to Egypt is supporting the first phase of the government's plans to upgrade health services comprehensively over the next two decades. It will gradually phase in universal basic coverage, focusing initially on especially vulnerable and impoverished groups and geographical areas. In Tunisia a $50 million loan is supporting the government's ongoing program for systemic reform of health services, with a special emphasis on regional hospitals, emergency services, and health information systems. In fiscal 1998 the executive directors approved innovative operations directly targeted at improving the living conditions of poor and marginalized communities and social groups. In the West Bank and Gaza, welfare services provided to poor Palestinians by NGOs have been sharply curtailed by funding cuts. Under the Palestinian NGO project, new funding totaling $17 million--including $10 million from the Trust Fund for Gaza and the West Bank provided on IDA terms--is being allocated to NGOs on the basis of demand-driven, community-supported applications for financing activities, such as handicap care, pre-school education, women's health and development activities, and low-cost housing. The project is both a new departure for the Bank and a demonstration of the potential for creative Bank-NGO partnerships for poverty alleviation and socioeconomic development. In Jordan a $30 million Bank loan is supporting the Community Infrastructure Project to provide basic physical and social infrastructure for up to about 1.6 million people living in the country's poorest municipal areas and villages. The project, which represents the pilot phase of the wider government Social Productivity Program, will also test the potential for supporting income-generating activities and, possibly, microenterprise development in Jordan's poorest communities. Strong beneficiary participation is a central feature of the project's design and implementation arrangements. And in Algeria, a project to provide affordable housing and infrastructure will improve living conditions for people in urban slums and nonserviced low-income areas in six districts. Several of the year's operations were targeted at the special plight of very poor rural populations. In Morocco a $10 million loan for the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project is providing safe and accessible water and basic sanitation to about 1.3 million rural inhabitants in the country's poorest provinces. In addition to its health benefits, the project is expected to have an especially positive impact on girls' school attendance, which is currently often curtailed by domestic duties, including having to fetch water from distant locations. In Yemen a $25 million credit for the Southern Governorates Rural Development Project is helping provide land and agricultural and other income-earning opportunities, including microenterprise -based, for 60,000 of the country's poorest rural inhabitants to raise their incomes above the poverty line. |
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| Contents |
World Bank Group |
Publications |
IBRD |
IDA |
IFC |
MIGA |
ICSID |