The World Bank Group works with a vast array of partners, both traditional and nontraditional, formal and informal, from around the world to help meet our goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity.
Partnering on today's most pressing challenges
Addressing global challenges requires collective action. Below are major examples of our partnerships in fiscal 2019.
Fragility. Fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) threaten efforts to end extreme poverty, with risks affecting both low- and middle-income countries. We are emphasizing prevention and early action, remaining engaged during active conflict, and mitigating the spillover impacts of FCV on the most vulnerable groups.
We are scaling up collaboration with humanitarian, development, peacebuilding, and security actors through country-level cooperation with the UN in over 40 crisis-affected situations. In addition, with G-5 countries and the Sahel Alliance, we are working to deliver $6.7 billion in development support to insecure areas across the Sahel region.
Human capital. We are working with a wide range of global leaders to build support for the Human Capital Project. At the Annual and Spring Meetings, the Bank hosted discussions with representatives across philanthropy, civil society, the private sector, and bilateral and multilateral institutions, along with Bank Group experts, to promote better investments in people.
Gender. We continue to deepen engagements to address gender inequality through various initiatives. For instance, with the governments of Canada and Norway, client countries, and IFC, we forged the Mashreq Gender Facility, which supports governments in addressing constraints to women’s labor force participation in the Mashreq region of the Middle East and North Africa.
In addition, the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality, a multidonor trust fund with 14 governments and international foundations, continued to catalyze knowledge, innovative project design, and impact evaluation evidence on the most effective approaches to closing gender gaps.
Climate change. We work with a wide range of partners to tackle climate challenges. The Global Commission on Adaptation seeks to accelerate action on climate change adaptation, elevate the political visibility of adaptation, and highlight tangible solutions. It aims to demonstrate that adaptation is a cornerstone of better development and helps improve lives, reduce poverty, protect the environment, and enhance resilience around the world. Together with Kristalina Georgieva, the Commission is jointly chaired by Ban Ki-moon, the eighth Secretary-General of the UN, and Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is convened by 19 countries, guided by 33 commissioners, and supported by a global network of research partners and advisors, including the World Bank, who provide scientific, economic, and policy analysis.
Deepening engagement with essential partners
The Bank Group emphasizes engagement with other multilateral institutions, philanthropy and the private sector, civil society, parliamentarians, faith-based organizations, and local communities.
Multilateral engagement. At the request of participating governments, we contribute expertise and policy recommendations for inclusive and sustainable growth and poverty reduction. At the end of Argentina’s G-20 Presidency in November 2018, we co-hosted an Investor Forum with the Argentine government to increase long-term sustainable financing in client countries. The Bank also supported the priorities of Japan’s G-20 Presidency, including quality infrastructure, resilience, debt sustainability and transparency, stronger health financing, and development of country platforms. Within the G-7, we are supporting France’s priorities on gender equality, human capital, biodiversity, trade, domestic resource mobilization, and digital transformation and inclusion.
Civil society. The Bank Group interacts with civil society organizations (CSOs) worldwide through partnerships and outreach, advocacy and campaigns, policy dialogue and consultations, operational collaboration, and information sharing, as well as grant mechanisms such as the Global Partnership for Social Accountability. Our CSO partners help extend our reach and improve our development impact, accountability, and transparency. The Civil Society Policy Forum, held during our Spring and Annual Meetings, enables CSOs to exchange views with the Bank Group, IMF staff, and other stakeholders on a range of topics. The 2019 Spring Meetings in Washington had a record attendance of over 1,000 delegates from 109 countries, with 46 sessions mostly organized and led by CSOs.
Faith-based organizations (FBOs). Our Global Faith Initiative helps faith actors to engage with the Bank Group on issues across regions and sectors, with a focus on human capital outcomes, gender, fragility, and climate change. This year, engagement centered on strengthening dialogue and outreach to advance the Bank Group’s goals, contributing to a more rigorous evidence base on the role and impact of FBOs in development, and fostering operational collaboration between the Bank and FBOs to invest more in people.
Philanthropy and the private sector. The 2030 SDGs have increased recognition that nontraditional actors can play a bigger role in mobilizing financing and harnessing innovation and expertise to achieve the goals. We have redoubled our focus on partnering with the private sector, including foundations, new philanthropists, impact investors, and social entrepreneurs.
For example, this year our strategic dialogue with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation focused on taking innovations to scale and resulted in collaborations on urban sanitation, agriculture and data, and use of technology to support smallholder farmers.
Parliamentarians. Our primary channel for engagement with legislators is the Parliamentary Network—an independent platform for more than 1,000 influential parliamentarians to deliberate and advocate for accountability and political support for development.
The 2019 Spring Meetings served as a platform for the fifth annual Global Parliamentary Conference, the network’s flagship event, gathering more than 100 MPs from 48 countries to engage with Bank Group experts and senior management on today’s most pressing issues. During the same period, the inaugural meeting of the Global Young Member of Parliament Initiative brought together legislators aged 45 and younger from 26 countries to share best practices and policy solutions to challenges that disproportionately affect younger generations.
Also this year, parliamentarians from 10 countries and CSO representatives from 13 organizations visited IDA projects in Senegal and The Gambia to see their impact on the ground.
Community Connections. The Bank Group’s Community Connections program helps staff live our values in our communities through corporate philanthropy, volunteerism, in-kind donations, and an internship program for local high school students. These efforts leverage our motivated, caring workforce for betterment of the Washington metropolitan area and other communities around the world where we work. This year, we contributed over $9 million to nongovernmental organizations in our communities, with over $4 million of it donated by staff. The institutional focus on human capital and gender was evident as our philanthropy helped fund the building of a workforce development facility and early childhood education centers in the Washington area.