Poverty, Peace, and China: PKSOI and World Bank Perspectives Issue 1 | Page 5

Poverty, Peace, and China: PKSOI and World Bank Perspectives
Improvement in IDA’s portfolio performance in FCACs
Ten years ago, the World Bank’s FCAC projects were twice as
likely to fail as those in the rest of the World Bank’s IDA portfolio. At present, the quality of projects in FCACs has improved
considerably and is now on par with the rest of the IDA portfolio.20 While it is uncertain whether this trend can be sustained
over the medium term especially through increasing private
sector activity, the results, so far, suggest that targeted efforts at
the project level can have a concrete impact, for example, in:
• Afghanistan, where – over the period 2003-2010 – about
22 million people in rural areas benefitted from better access
to water, electricity and roads through the National Solidarity
Program.

ment Bank. The IDA team identified how individual operations could be adjusted to address specific transition priorities
• Ivory Coast, where an assistance project financed labor intenand underlying causes of conflict. In the areas of public sector
sive public works, community rehabilitation activities, and vocagovernance, the focus was on supporting institutional reform
tional training to reconstruct communities and help reintegrate
linked to the broader national dialogue process.
18,000 ex-combatants, other armed groups, and youth at risk.
• The African Greater Lakes region, where as part of a
multi-agency effort IDA helped demobilize and re-integrate
over 300,000 ex-combatants in seven countries.
• Liberia, where the IDA-funded Governance and Economic
Management Assistance Program helped build the basic systems
and institutions in the areas of public financial management,
budget preparation and execution, accountability, civil service
and capacity building.
• Sierra Leone, where an IDA-financed safety nets program
helped 700 thousand people to gain access to health facilities,
400 thousand children to educational facilities, and over 100
thousand people to markets and other economic infrastructure.21
More Work to be Done
To contribute to the peacebuilding agenda and provide greater support to address the drivers of fragility and conflict in
FCACs, the World Bank established the Global Center for
Conflict, Security and Development (CCSD) in Nairobi in
2011.22 Among other projects, the World Bank’s CCSD is in:
• Yemen. Following the 2011 crisis, IDA conducted a Joint
Social and Economic Assessment of Yemen in coordination
with the UN, the European Union, and the Islamic Develop-

• Democratic Republic of Congo. In recognition of the destabilizing impact of ongoing low intensity conflicts in the eastern
provinces of the Congo, the World Bank conducted a study in
November 2012 to evaluate the root causes and drivers of conflict, and identify possible areas of Bank support. This exercise
led to the formation of a multi-sectoral strategy of assistance,
addressing key impediments to peace consolidation and durable
economic development in eastern Congo.
• Other FCACs. In Guinea-Bissau, South Sudan, Niger, Burundi, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, Somalia and Liberia,
Bank teams are working with the support of the CCSD to
launch assistance strategies. Addressing not merely investment
and capacity deficits, these strategies directly confront the
underlying drivers of fragility and propose a combination of
financial and technical assistance to help build stability based
on the examples of Yemen and the Congo.23
PKSOI’s Role
FCACs are the focus of the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) at the U.S. Army War College. We
were originally founded in 1993 as the U.S. Army Peacekeeping
Institute, eighteen years before the World Bank’s Center for
Conflict, Security and Development. What do we contribute
to the growing dialogue as the World Bank begins to engage
with the UN and other international actors on peacebuilding?

pksoi.army.mil

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