Supporting Countries’ Crisis Response and Recovery

Tracking the pandemic’s impact on the poor

In a year like no other, our focus remained squarely on confronting the impact of COVID-19 on the world’s poorest people, measuring the changes brought about by this extraordinary event, and emphasizing the risks posed by the downturn, including higher levels of poverty and inequality.

Soon after the onset of the pandemic, the Bank began conducting high-frequency phone surveys to gauge its effects and inform policy making. This effort has expanded to more than 100 countries, with many results available in a harmonized dashboard to enable cross-country comparisons. The results show that the impacts have been felt in all countries but are hardest on the poor and vulnerable. Women, young people, and less educated workers—groups that were already at a disadvantage in the labor market—were more likely to lose their job in the short term. Relative to men, women were 11 percentage points more likely to have lost their job; a similar gap was found between college-educated workers and those with a primary school education or less. Young and older workers also bore the brunt of the pandemic’s impact on jobs.

Our flagship report, Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune, found that extreme poverty increased globally for the first time in two decades—and that COVID-19, combined with the ongoing effects of climate change and conflict, would impede progress toward ending poverty. Harnessing fresh data from front-line surveys and economic simulations, the report showed that pandemic-related job losses and deprivation worldwide have hit already poor and vulnerable people hard, while also creating millions of “new poor”—people who are now impoverished because of the COVID-19 outbreak, and who are more likely to be urban, better educated, and work in the informal economy. The report provides recommendations for a complementary two-track approach: responding effectively to the urgent crisis in the short run while continuing to focus on foundational development problems, including conflict and climate change.

Saving lives

Responding to an unprecedented global health crisis

Since the onset of the pandemic, we have been working to save lives and boost global recovery. In fiscal 2021, we built on our COVID-19 response—which has reached over 100 countries—and have made available $20 billion over 24 months to help poor countries purchase and distribute vaccines, tests, and treatments, as well as strengthen health systems. We approved the first Bank-financed operation to support vaccine rollout in January 2021—by the end of fiscal 2021, we approved more than $4.4 billion for 53 countries. This includes support for vaccine cold chains, training for health workers, better data and information systems, and outreach campaigns to promote vaccine acceptance.

We are working with a broad range of global partners—including the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Gavi, the Global Fund, UNICEF, and the WHO—to ensure fair access to COVID-19 vaccines and help developing countries prepare for vaccine deployment. We are supporting multilateral efforts—such as the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) and COVAX, its vaccine pillar—to accelerate development, production, and fair access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. And in June 2021, the Bank Group convened a task force with the IMF, WHO, and WTO to advance delivery of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics to developing countries. These efforts include a global database and country dashboards to monitor gaps and support faster and more targeted progress.

Our Assessing Country Readiness for COVID-19 Vaccines report, carried out jointly with governments and partner organizations, detailed key findings from vaccine readiness assessments in over 140 low- and middle-income countries.

The pandemic has also disrupted delivery of essential health services, threatening to reverse years of gains in health and human capital outcomes. Many non-communicable and preventable diseases have gone untreated amid a surge in demand for critical care and a shortage of hospital beds, tests, medical equipment, and personal protective equipment. Yet strong primary health care services are essential to prevent, detect, and manage diseases, as well as promote health. A new World Bank report, Walking the Talk: Reimagining Primary Health Care after COVID-19, shows that well-designed primary health care can help flatten the curve during a health crisis like COVID-19 through surveillance, testing and contract tracing, community outreach, and vaccine coverage.  To ensure that quality and affordable health services reach everyone—regardless of their ability to pay—we help countries work toward universal health coverage.  This can reduce the financial risk associated with ill health and increase equity. We also help countries cope with aging populations and a growing burden of non-communicable diseases.

We are also helping countries prevent pandemics by strengthening veterinary and human health systems, as well as the connections between them. Better pandemic preparedness, including surveillance and monitoring, is essential to overcome COVID-19 and prepare for future disease outbreaks. Learning from the 2014 and 2015 Ebola outbreaks in West Africa, we have expanded IDA financing for the Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement Program in West and Central Africa to enhance preparedness. We are also supporting other regional centers of excellence, such as the Africa Centers for Disease Control, the East Africa Public Health Laboratory Networking Project, and the West African Health Organization.

The Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Program, set up in fiscal 2021, complements our efforts and provides further resources to respond to COVID-19 and other health emergencies as well as help countries better prepare for disease outbreaks. The program provides upstream, catalytic, and rapid financing to the most vulnerable countries, some of which cannot access traditional Bank financing. As of June 2021 the program had awarded 10 grants for health emergency preparedness and 19 for health emergency response, amounting to $86 million.

The Global Financing Facility (GFF) is a global partnership housed at the Bank that seeks to ensure that all women, children, and adolescents can survive and thrive—these groups have been disproportionately affected by the health impacts of the pandemic. Across the GFF’s 36 partner countries, we have seen up to a 25 percent drop in the coverage of life-saving health interventions in areas such as childhood vaccinations, sexual and reproductive health, and maternal care. The GFF is helping countries monitor disruptions, strengthen supply chains for essential medicines and tools, support community health workers, and scale up innovations in service delivery and cash transfer programs. In Liberia, the GFF adapted its existing grant to strengthen the capacity of frontline health workers, address low demand for health care services, and adjust existing programs to address needs arising from COVID-19. The GFF is also helping ensure that gender equity is part of inclusive recovery efforts.

Understanding COVID-19 through data and research

Our coronavirus open data website provides streamlined, open access to relevant COVID-19 data, including a dashboard that offers real-time global data alongside relevant indicators, such as health system capacity and access to basic handwashing facilities. Reflecting our commitment to open data, the site allows users, including developers, to access the data through APIs.

In addition, our research looks at the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the policies that aim to shield people from its worst impacts. It looks at the unprecedented effects on health outcomes, extreme poverty, businesses, and inequality. We also analyze policies that have helped counteract the worst impacts, including social protection programs and targeted support to the financial sector to help sustain businesses.

Protecting human capital gains and improving outcomes

Human capital is the health, knowledge, capabilities, skills, and resilience that people accumulate throughout their life to achieve their potential. The Human Capital Project (HCP) works across sectors to improve outcomes so that every child grows up well nourished and ready to learn, attains real learning in school, and enters the job market as a healthy, skilled, and productive adult. We are pursuing these goals through a combination of data, measurement, analytics, and robust country and global engagement.

But the COVID-19 crisis threatens a decade of human capital gains. In 2020, about 100 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty; this generation of children could lose up to $10 trillion in lifetime earnings. The crisis underscores the urgency of investing in human development, including achieving quality universal health coverage and pandemic preparedness, establishing inclusive education that allows for remote learning, ensuring equity for women and girls, expanding social protection coverage, promoting productivity through all stages of life, and developing adaptable programs and policies. People with good health and nutrition, education, savings, and safety nets can better withstand shocks.

The 2020 update of the Human Capital Index provides a baseline of human capital outcomes right up to the pandemic. It includes a new human capital utilization measurement that links endowments to productivity. Further progress includes the launch of a Healthy Longevity Initiative to enhance outcomes among the aging population. The index also updates service delivery indicators that measure access to and quality of health and education services; these can help countries identify gaps, implement policies, and accelerate progress, including at the subnational level. In addition, the Bank has launched multisectoral analytical tools, such as Human Capital Reviews and Human Capital Public Expenditure and Institutional Reviews, to help governments track related investments and outcomes. We also help governments prioritize human capital expenditures; in April 2021, our approach paper, Investing in Human Capital for a Resilient Recovery: The Role of Public Finance, outlined adequate, efficient, and sustainable spending amid fiscal tightening.

Our partnerships foster collaboration and knowledge sharing for better human capital outcomes. The HCP Country Focal Point Network enables government officials around the world to share experiences and lessons learned. We also hosted conclaves with ministers of finance during the World Bank–IMF Annual and Spring Meetings, with representation from 81 countries across income levels. In March 2021, the first Human Capital Project Global Forum brought together senior government officials from 69 countries to discuss investing in people during the pandemic, reimagining service delivery, and mobilizing finance to accelerate recovery. We also engage with global champions and other key stakeholders to drive action on human capital priorities. Through our Human Capital Umbrella financing mechanism, we partner to encourage catalytic and multisectoral initiatives for better outcomes.

Putting people at the heart of development will help countries restore and bolster human capital progress and achieve green, resilient, and inclusive development. Human capital is a special theme for the IDA20 replenishment cycle to support poor countries’ recovery from COVID-19. It is also central to our systemic country diagnostics and country partnership frameworks. We have rolled out regional human capital plans for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia to support progress in multiple sectors.

Ensuring water security for all

Water insecurity arises from gaps in access to water supply and sanitation, rapid urbanization and population growth, pollution, climate impacts, and water-intensive growth patterns. The pandemic has only further highlighted the importance of safely managed water, sanitation, and hygiene services in protecting public health.

The Bank is working with countries and partners to respond urgently to COVID-19, support economic recovery, and rebuild better, while also promoting sustainable water use for the long run. With over $26 billion in investments, spanning 162 projects, the Bank’s vision is to create a water-secure world for all and promote sustainable growth for people and the planet. We are working to improve resource management, facilitate universal access to water and sanitation, and optimize water use in agriculture. We are also supporting systems that can better withstand climate extremes and address fragility in water-stressed countries, thus strengthening resilience. In Vietnam, a rural water and sanitation program provided access for nearly 2 million people. In Brazil, our support to the world’s largest public utility is expanding access to peri-urban areas in São Paulo. In Nigeria, we are helping improve technology, institutions, and value chains to expand irrigation for 1 million farmers. In Kosovo, our support to the country’s comprehensive water security program, which includes an emergency COVID-19 component, addresses infrastructure, institutions, and long-term economic resilience.

The world is facing an acute water crisis, and demand for fresh water frequently exceeds supply. Water variability—from droughts to floods—is becoming more frequent, exacerbated by climate change. The Bank is transforming approaches to water security by improving infrastructure, promoting nature-based solutions for critical services, and empowering institutions. In Kenya, we are helping develop river basin plans, building capacity for issuing water permits, improving irrigation and flood protection infrastructure, setting up bulk water storage, and increasing the efficiency of the downstream utility. In Argentina, our work through the Matanza Riachuelo River Cleanup Project is providing about 6 million people with access to sewerage and wastewater treatment.

The Global Water Security and Sanitation Partnership, a multidonor trust fund launched in 2017, helps countries build capacity and strengthen the institutions and infrastructure they need to supply current and future generations with sufficient water, food, and energy. The 2030 Water Resources Group, a public, private, and civil society partnership, is establishing a global task force to finance the water sector, with a focus on building resilient utilities, using new technologies for better water management, and enabling service providers to deliver services more efficiently as well as adapt in the face of crises.

The 2020 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 

The 2020 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals is the third edition of the series, which explores various paths to achieving progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It guides readers through the goals using interactive storytelling and data visualizations, highlights selected targets and trends for each goal, and sheds light on how some of the goals are measured. This year’s edition also illustrates the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, using new projection data compiled by the Bank, phone surveys, impact studies, and anecdotal evidence. It looks at the effect of the pandemic on global poverty and provides potential scenarios between now and 2030. It also highlights the impact of the pandemic on the most vulnerable people, education outcomes, and remittance flows.

Protecting food security and promoting sustainable food systems

Hunger has been rising globally since 2014, driven by conflict, climate change, diseases, and pest outbreaks. The economic impacts of COVID-19 and measures to control the pandemic, as well as rising global food prices, have made food even more unaffordable for the world’s poorest people. In 2020, between 720 and 811 million people faced hunger—as many as 161 million more people than in 2019—and more than 2 billion people did not have access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food.

In fiscal 2021, we worked with partners to address growing food insecurity by closely monitoring food prices and export restrictions and advocating for more financing and policy measures to strengthen food and nutrition security. We convened roundtables with finance and development ministers at the Annual and Spring Meetings and raised awareness of overlapping crises that are affecting livelihoods, nutrition, natural resources, and political stability.

Adaptable safety net and food distribution programs provide immediate relief for vulnerable families, while investments in more resilient supply chains offer hope for the long term. In Angola, we helped farmer cooperatives and small agricultural enterprises expand and improve their operations to meet the needs of local communities. In Guatemala, we are supporting small and medium agriculture enterprises with emergency relief and improving their production processes for the long term, with investments in better post-harvest practices and storage to reduce food loss. In Haiti, we mobilized emergency financing to help farmers purchase seeds, fertilizer, and other inputs to safeguard production for the next two growing seasons. In India, we co-financed self-help groups that ran community kitchens and provided food and support to vulnerable communities. In Nigeria, we are supporting greater access to social transfers, better food security for poor and vulnerable households, and stronger links between farmers and markets to prevent disruptions and job losses in agricultural supply chains.

We work with governments to build robust and sustainable food systems that can deliver better health outcomes, promote more resilient and sustainable agricultural growth, support nutrition, and be more resilient to climate change. This includes investing in infrastructure to boost efficiency and sustainability throughout the food supply chain and encouraging countries to adopt policies that will improve the long-term outlook of their food systems. We are helping countries like India and Kenya finance digital platforms that farmers can use to access markets, reduce waste, and adopt climate-smart practices. We are also encouraging countries to adopt a “One Health” approach that recognizes the connection between human, animal, and planetary health and promotes investments in preparedness and prevention of zoonotic diseases.

Protecting the poorest and most vulnerable people

Addressing the global learning crisis and preventing learning losses

Even before the pandemic, the world was experiencing a learning crisis, with nearly 260 million children and youth out of school. In developing countries, 53 percent of all 10-year-old children could not read and understand a simple text, an indicator we define as learning poverty. The extended school closures and economic downturn amid COVID-19 have compounded this crisis. At the peak of school closures in April 2020, 94 percent of students were out of school. We estimate that the learning poverty rate in low- and middle-income countries could now rise to 63 percent and that children affected by learning losses stand to lose $16 trillion in lifetime earnings—almost 10 percent of global GDP—as a result of the pandemic.

Our support to countries covers the entire learning cycle, to help shape resilient, equitable, and inclusive education systems that ensure learning happens for everyone, including during COVID-19. We are the largest source of external financing for education in developing countries; in fiscal 2021, we committed $6.3 billion across 60 new education projects, including $697 million in Global Partnership for Education (GPE) grants and $47 million for other trust funds. We continue to be the largest implementing agency of GPE grants to low-income countries, managing 52 percent of its total grant portfolio. Overall, the Bank has over $23 billion in our education portfolio.

We are implementing a two-prong approach: on one hand, helping countries return students to school and implement learning recovery programs, and on the other, rebuilding systems to be more effective, resilient, and equitable. In India, a $500 million project is investing in remote learning, reducing dropouts, providing remedial instruction, and offering technology-enabled psychosocial support for teachers, students, and families. The government is also enhancing teachers’ digital access to subject matter and pedagogical training. The project will reach around 250 million school-age children and over 10 million teachers. In Edo State, Nigeria, the Bank is providing $75 million to deliver remote learning through interactive radio lessons, digital self-study activity packets, storybooks for independent reading, mobile interactive quizzes, and lesson plans for parents, reaching 20,000 students in 930 primary schools.  

We generate and disseminate evidence-based guidance and advice to countries on topics such as reopening schools, assessing remote learning solutions, bringing reading materials to homes, ensuring professional development for teachers, and strengthening the capacity of tertiary education and technical and vocational schools. We work with many bilateral and multilateral partners and international foundations, including UNICEF, UNESCO, the UK government, USAID, the Global Partnership for Education, OECD, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Harvard, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins universities. Efforts include a new Accelerator Program we launched in November 2020 to ensure that participating countries can improve foundational skills at scale over the next three to five years.  

Building stronger social protection systems for a more resilient future

Effective social protection systems are central to reducing poverty, enabling human capital investments, and laying the foundation for inclusive and equitable societies. Yet in much of the world, especially developing countries, major gaps in coverage remain. Before the pandemic, only 45 percent of the world’s population were covered by some form of social protection—in the poorest countries, only one in five poor people had access to social safety nets.

COVID-19 has further exposed these gaps and underscored the need for robust systems in times of crisis. To address the impacts of the pandemic, we are scaling up safety net operations through countries’ existing social protection systems. In fiscal 2021, our social protection projects provided $8.6 billion in new financing to 38 countries, including 13 countries facing conflict and fragility, benefiting nearly 1 billion people worldwide. Between April 2020 and June 2021, we also reallocated $1.7 billion from existing projects, benefiting almost 45 million people. In Ghana, we are supporting cash transfers that will provide a one-time payment to 350,000 households as they cope with economic hardships arising from COVID-19. In Pakistan, $25 million will provide emergency cash transfers for up to 4 million people under the national safety net.

In 69 countries, we have assessed over 130 pension reform measures for ways to strengthen social insurance and pensions. This includes potential compensatory measures to address deficits in pension systems and restore retirement savings lost due to the pandemic.

To prepare for future crises and ensure a resilient recovery, countries need to invest in social protection systems that are shock-responsive and adaptive. Our Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks report shows that adaptive programs can build resilience for poor and vulnerable families by boosting their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks, including climate-related risks and fragile or conflict-affected situations.

The current crisis further reinforces the case for fundamental reform of safety net programs, as billions of informal workers struggle to get the coverage they need. The Bank calls for a decisive shift toward financing models based on general taxation, instead of contributory systems that are largely limited to formal sector workers. We also support workers in the informal sector by helping them access services, training opportunities, microfinance, self-employment, and public works programs. In Bangladesh, the Recovery and Advancement of Informal Sector Employment Project will help about 175,000 poor urban youths and low-income microentrepreneurs become more employable and productive.

As the world grapples with the pandemic, our State of Economic Inclusion Report 2021 points to paths out of poverty for the poorest and most vulnerable people. With this report, the Partnership for Economic Inclusion, housed at the World Bank, presented the first-ever systematic review of economic inclusion programs globally. It found efforts have surged worldwide as governments have scaled up programs that focus on social protection, livelihoods, jobs, and financial inclusion. In 75 countries, programs are on the rise, reaching about 20 million households and nearly 92 million individuals.

Closing gender gaps and empowering women

Closing gender gaps and empowering women can help set countries on a sustainable path toward more diversified economies, higher levels of productivity, and better prospects for the next generation. The Bank Group’s Gender Equality Strategy for 2016–23 seeks to close gaps between men and women across four key pillars: human endowments (health, education, and social protection), jobs, assets, and voice and agency.

Yet critical gaps remain. Major challenges—ranging from climate change, forced migration, and pandemics to decelerating investment growth and rising poverty rates—affect boys, girls, men, and women differently, largely due to discriminatory laws and policies, as well as social norms about economic roles and responsibilities. The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating these risks and threatening gains in gender equality. It has brought disruptions in key health services, including maternal and reproductive health; a faster rate of job loss for women than men; more severe impacts on small businesses owned and led by women; and sharp increases in gender-based violence (GBV). The pandemic also compounds risks from inadequate social safety nets and gender gaps in access to digital technologies. And because women are overrepresented in the health sector and more likely to be caregivers, they are also under greater stress and at more risk of exposure to the virus.

The World Bank is helping countries address the health, social, and economic impacts of the crisis—especially those that disproportionately affect women and girls—and make their economies more inclusive and resilient as they rebuild. In Zambia, we are ensuring the continuity of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition services. In Cambodia, we are improving the availability of services that are critical to preventing mortality among women; this includes better access to family planning, reduction of teen pregnancies, and effective screening and treatment for cervical cancer.

We are helping women return to economic activity, including through cash-for-work programs, expanded child care support, agricultural inputs, and better access to credit and liquidity for women-led firms. In Mauritania, Mozambique, and Togo, we are providing cash transfers through mobile payments to address lower incomes and bank account ownership among women. In Nepal, we are promoting entrepreneurial business development skills for women and providing them with better farm equipment.

We work to prevent and respond to GBV by supporting remote counseling services, training health workers to identify and refer cases, improving case registration, facilitating communication campaigns, and strengthening data collection and referral mechanisms. In Kenya, we are helping health care providers identify the risks and health consequences of GBV and offer frontline support and medical treatment.

To support evidence-based policy actions, we collect and curate data through the Gender Data Portal, which provides open access to sex-disaggregated data for over 600 indicators that cover demographics, education, health, access to economic opportunities, public life, and decision making. Gender Innovation Labs in nearly all developing regions also conduct rigorous impact evaluations on innovative approaches to closing gender gaps.

World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives

Promoting social inclusion

Social sustainability and inclusion programs have played a critical role in supporting the most vulnerable people and marginalized groups during the COVID-19 crisis. These programs focus on migrants, persons with disabilities, women, the elderly, sexual and gender minorities, Indigenous Peoples, and other racial and ethnic minorities, who often lack essential services and have been heavily affected by the pandemic.

Community-led approaches are playing a critical role in our response to the crisis. We are supporting a regional community development program in Ethiopia that has reached over 730,000 people, more than half of whom are women. About 83,000 children can now access primary schools, more than 368,000 people can access health centers, and 135,000 people have better access to safe water. Livelihood support is providing more income for about 150,000 people, and 23,000 have access to better energy sources. We are also applying an inclusive delivery approach in our efforts to promote women’s economic empowerment. In Nigeria, the Bank is working closely with communities to bolster women’s livelihoods in a groundbreaking initiative that aims to remove social and other barriers to gender parity, including by linking women-run businesses to the marketplace.

Working with our network of community leaders, we initiated high-frequency monitoring initiatives to better track the impact of COVID-19 on persons with disabilities, poor women, and ethnic minorities. In the Kyrgyz Republic, we helped build a database of nearly 4,000 respondents—representing community leaders from every region in the country—who are polled monthly to gather insights into community conditions. We are also using our community engagements to disseminate information on how to manage the pandemic. In Ghana, we are working with communities to provide key information about COVID-19 at the national, regional, and district levels. Recent surveys showed that 83 percent of Ghanaians felt they had adequate information about the pandemic and high trust in information originating from the government.

We are deploying new digital citizen engagement techniques to reach out to communities. In Afghanistan, the Citizen’s Charter Program polled over 12,000 community development councils through an interactive voice response phone survey in Pashto and Dari. Through the Environmental and Social Framework, we are also promoting the use of electronic platforms to engage stakeholders and manage risks. In Maldives, we are supporting a project that provides emergency income support to workers affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The project deployed a grievance redress mechanism that processed nearly 23,000 submissions through a national call center and web-based platforms—helping ensure more inclusive delivery of financial support.

Our approach to social sustainability emphasizes the need to build resilience and social cohesion, especially for societies and communities affected by fragility or social unrest. In Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, we are helping develop a comprehensive strategy to manage the challenges emerging from a large influx of displaced persons. In the Philippines, we are helping stakeholders in Mindanao transition to peace by strengthening the capacity of local authorities and communities to undertake responsive and accountable local development.

Survey of national statistical offices

This past year, the World Bank partnered with the UN to conduct a global online survey to assess the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on national statistical offices and identify needs for financial and technical support. More than 120 countries participated. The first round of results, in June 2020, highlighted the heavy impact of the crisis. The second round, in August 2020, identified the need for better coordination and technical assistance to avoid further exacerbating global data inequalities. The third round, in October 2020, gave a glimpse of the long-term impacts of the pandemic on these offices’ operations. The fourth round, in May 2021, focused on the technology challenges, funding, and costs of statistical operations, as well as difficulties in collecting data on specific groups. More than a year into the pandemic, the impacts on national statistical offices have been more extensive than expected, despite improvements in collecting data and upgrading technology.

Supporting countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence

Even before the pandemic, it was estimated that up to two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor would be concentrated in countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) by 2030. In 2020, COVID-19 pushed roughly 18 million more people in fragile and conflict-affected settings into extreme poverty and doubled the number of food-insecure people to 270 million globally. The world also continues to face the largest forced displacement crisis ever, with more than 82 million people fleeing conflict and violence. In some countries, the pandemic may further deepen fragility, impeding recovery efforts.

The Bank Group has supported over 30 fragile and conflict-affected countries in their response to COVID-19. We aim to address the pandemic’s health, economic and social impacts; strengthen resilience, especially for vulnerable and marginalized populations; and help countries tackle the underlying drivers of fragility that pose long-term risks to development—all in line with our FCV strategy, released in February 2020. We help governments address drivers of fragility and risks—such as climate change, demographic shocks, gender inequality, discrimination, economic and social exclusion, and perceptions of grievances and injustice—and we adapt to remain engaged in the most challenging settings.

We continued to increase our support to countries affected by FCV under IDA19, which includes $26 billion in financing to help countries prevent conflict escalation, strengthen resilience, create development opportunities for refugees and host communities, and escape fragility over the long term. IDA19 created an envelope to provide tailored support and incentives to IDA countries that face FCV risks, enhancing our ability to respond rapidly to dynamic situations and supporting a focus on prevention. Hence we can better help countries that are at risk of large-scale conflict, applying preventive approaches across portfolios. We can also remain engaged in countries with high-intensity conflict and extremely limited government capacity, as well as support countries emerging from conflict or crisis. In addition, we are scaling up regional approaches to fragility, strengthening the conflict-sensitivity of our country approaches, supporting capacity building and implementation, and boosting crisis preparedness to address food insecurity and pandemic threats. In fiscal 2021, the Bank approved $14.0 billion in IDA19 commitments for countries affected by FCV. This includes usage from the FCV envelope as well as IDA windows, including the Window for Host Communities and Refugees, the Crisis Response Window (including early response financing for food security), the Scale-Up Window, and regional windows. The IDA20 replenishment will continue to make FCV a priority.

Most of the world’s nearly 26 million refugees are hosted by developing countries, and three-quarters of them remain displaced after five years. IDA19 includes a $2.2 billion Window for Host Communities and Refugees, from which the Bank used $600 million in financing for 11 projects in seven countries in fiscal 2021. We expect to fully use all remaining IDA19 resources under this window by the end of fiscal 2022. The IDA19 Crisis Response Window also helps the poorest countries manage crises and create opportunities that help mitigate large refugee flows. We are applying regional approaches in areas acutely affected by forced displacement, including the Sahel, the Lake Chad region, and the Horn of Africa.

The Global Concessional Financing Facility (GCFF) provides assistance to middle-income countries that host large numbers of refugees. Since 2016, it has provided more than $671 million in grants to unlock almost $5 billion in concessional financing. This is helping Jordan and Lebanon address the inflow of Syrian refugees as well as helping Colombia and Ecuador meet the needs of more than 1 million displaced Venezuelans and their host communities. It also provides a platform for coordination among multilateral development banks, the UN, and participating countries.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a critical partner in delivering on the FCV strategy to address the needs of the forcibly displaced and their host communities; it is also involved in all work that the GCFF supports. In Jordan, we are partnering to help the government issue work permits to Syrian refugees, which expand their access to work opportunities in the formal sector amid the downturn spurred by COVID-19. The World Bank and UNHCR are also supporting the country’s vaccine strategy, which includes refugee populations.

Global food insecurity has reached unprecedented levels, with countries affected by FCV especially at risk. Through the IDA19 Crisis Response Window’s Early Response Financing mechanism, we are supporting countries’ early responses to food security crises by scaling up emergency safety nets as well as support for livelihoods. In Yemen, the effort is being designed in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization to reach 150,000 households in the most vulnerable areas.

In line with the FCV strategy, the Bank Group is deepening cooperation with humanitarian, development, peace building, security, and private sector organizations to leverage our complementary mandates and strengthen our impact on the ground. These partnerships have been essential to our COVID-19 response. In Niger, we are working with the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and UNHCR to meet the needs of vulnerable populations and strengthen national social protection systems. And through inclusive, community-driven approaches, we are better able to operate in remote or conflict-affected environments. In Afghanistan, we have used this approach to improve access to clean water, electricity, roads, irrigation, health care, and education to communities across the country. We also redeployed $100 million from an existing project to provide food and cash assistance for the most vulnerable people as part of our broader COVID-19 response in the country.