On the Frontlines of Rising Fragility: Collaborating and Innovating for Impact | Highlights from the WBG-IMF Spring Meetings 2022

By 2030, up to two-thirds of the world's extreme poor could live in fragility, conflict, and violence settings, so without addressing the challenges in these economies, we will not succeed in our mission to eradicate extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity. The disturbing trend of rising and compounding crises points to an urgent need for the international community to come together and develop new and innovative approaches to support countries facing conflict and fragility.

During the 2022 World Bank Group-IMF Spring Meetings, we discussed how to stay engaged during times of crisis and meet the challenges in new and innovative ways, along with our partners. World leaders came together to discuss how to best build resilience & manage uncertainty. Listen to the Spring Meetings highlights in a special series of The Development Podcast.

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Timestamps

[00:00] Welcome and introduction of the topic

[02:15] The case of Yemen: Crises, challenges, and solutions

[06:03] How Colombia has been addressing the refugee crisis from neighboring Venezuela

[10:15] How the international community can come together to assist the most vulnerable

[19:44] How the private sector can play an essential role

[28:14] Closure and thanks for tuning!

Featured voices

• Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed, Prime Minister, Yemen: "Unprecedented times need unprecedented actions. The response of the crisis determine how we can build back better after the crisis. So the response should be unique."
• Alejandra Botero, Director General, Department of Planning, Colombia: "If we're going to promise to give them all the services so that they can be part of the social system, health, schools, everything, you have to have a plan to integrate the migrants at all these sectors."
• Axel van Trotsenburg, Managing Director of Operations, World Bank: "Our estimate shows that extreme poverty will be concentrated in fragility, conflict, and violence settings in the next couple of years; so if we want to stop that trend, we have to invest."
• Hervé Ndoba, Minister of Finance and Budget, Central African Republic: "When we're facing fragility, the fiscal space is very reduced and we have to find solutions in order to increase this fiscal space. We have started the cleanup of the public financing."
• Catherine Russell, Executive Director, UNICEF: "Roughly 425 million children right now are living in conflict zones. These children are living in places where the compounding of the challenges requires a compounding of the responses."
• Makhtar Diop, Managing Director, IFC: "We need to be persistent enough to convince the private sector to invest in a fragile country, but also we need to think about how the private sector can help mitigate the risk of working in this context."
• Donald Kaberuka, Chairman and Managing Partner, SouthBridge: "These small businesses, what you call the informal sector, unfortunately are actually the ones able to provide the daily jobs which people need."
• Mary Nazzal-Batayneh, Founder of Landmark Hotels & 17 Ventures: "Looking at the multiple crises that we are facing as humanity, it shows that the public sector and private sector and civil society need to work together within the spirit of the Sustainable Development Goal 17."

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ABOUT THE WBG-IMF SPRING MEETINGS 2022

Preparing for future crises and strengthening international cooperation are essential to deliver a resilient recovery and a better future for those most in need. At these Spring Meetings, the World Bank Group convened leaders, experts and activists to discuss the impact of these global shocks on the most vulnerable communities.

ABOUT THE WORLD BANK GROUP

The World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and knowledge for low-income countries. Its five institutions share a commitment to reducing poverty, increasing shared prosperity, and promoting sustainable development.