WASHINGTON, April 18, 2017 –. Middle-income countries (MICs) currently host roughly six million refugees, with over 80 percent of them in the Middle East and North Africa and in Turkey. But even as they perform this global public good, middle-income host countries struggle to access concessional finance to cope with the costs of an influx of refugees. This high-level event will discuss the impact the Global Concessional Financing Facility (GCFF) has made in helping Jordan and Lebanon address the influx of Syrian refugees; how to ensure the GCFF remains well-positioned to meet the needs of Syrian refugees and Jordan and Lebanon’s host communities going forward; and how this global facility can prepare to address the needs of other MICs facing refugee crises in the future. The discussion will also seek to draw lessons from the GCFF for broader efforts to bridge the divide between the humanitarian and development communities, and for international actors working to promote global public goods in response to shared, cross-border challenges.
DATE: Friday, April 21, 2017
TIME: 9:30a.m.–10:30a.m. EDT
PLACE: Wolfensohn Atrium, World Bank MC
PARTICIPANTS:
Kristalina Georgieva, Chief Executive Officer, World Bank Group
Priti Patel, Secretary of State for International Development, United Kingdom
Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, Canada
Isabella Lövin, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for International Development Cooperation and Climate, Sweden
Ghassan Hasbani, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Health, Lebanon
Imad Fakhoury, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Jordan
Lilianne Ploumen, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, Netherlands
Ulla Tørnæs, Minister for Development Cooperation, Denmark
Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR
Ghida Fakhry, Moderator
Interested media must register for this event by Thursday, April 20. Please RSVP to wstebbins@worldbank.org or by calling 202-458-7883.
Please note that journalists need to be accredited to the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings to attend the event.
The event will also be livestreamed here: https://live.worldbank.org/refugee-crisis-mic
