Social Development

Global development is at an important crossroads. Despite remarkable gains over the last several decades, a growing number of challenges threaten to reverse development gains and jeopardize the prospects for continued progress. These challenges range from rising inequality and erosion of trust within societies to climate change, pandemics, and increasing conflict across the globe. As of 2022, one third of the global population is at risk of exclusion from services, access to markets, and participation in cultural and political spaces. Exclusion can occur based on gender, disability status, age, sexual orientation or gender identity (SOGI), ethnicity, race, and migration status, among other characteristics.

Social development is about ensuring people from all groups feel included and see lasting economic and social opportunities while contributing to their country’s growth. We support our client countries to build socially sustainable communities.

Social development reflects the World Bank’s commitment to addressing longstanding barriers to development, strengthening the focus on people who have been excluded from economic and social opportunities, and increasing investment in inclusive growth. We support our client countries to build socially sustainable communities and societies that are able to work together to overcome challenges, deliver public goods, and allocate scarce resources in a manner perceived as legitimate and fair by all, so that all people may thrive over time.

Last Updated: Mar 18, 2025

The World Bank offers a range of solutions to address social development challenges. The World Bank’s work on social development focuses on four areas:

Inclusive Societies

We enable improved access to markets, services and spaces for vulnerable and marginalized groups in ways that promote their dignity, through:

• Social and gender inclusion data & analytics

• Financing for Social Inclusion and gender equality 

• Support for social inclusion and gender equality across the World Bank’s portfolio  

Resilient Communities  

We support communities to cope with climate change, conflict, pandemics, migration and safety by expanding access to resources and responsive governments.

• Locally led climate action, including Just Transitions

• Conflict prevention and recovery, forced migration

• Violence prevention

Empowered People

We support increased access of marginalized groups to the policy arena to strengthen social accountability and build consensus for positive change.

• Institutions and innovations for citizen engagement

• Partnerships and platforms to strengthen civic space, voice and accountability

• Human rights trust fund

Social Opportunities and Risks

We support social risk management and enhance inclusion, efficiency, and transparency of public and private investments.

• Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) project preparation and implementation

• Environmental and Social (E&S) country dialogues, systems assessments, and regulatory reform

Last Updated: Mar 18, 2025

Recent World Bank projects that address core social development priorities include:

• Afghanistan. The Community Resilience and Livelihoods Project is working with community development councils to deliver urgent essential services in rural and urban areas. In the wake of the 2021 political crisis that has triggered a major disruption in core government services and severe economic recession, the project is supporting both access to services and short-term livelihoods, with a particular focus on women and vulnerable groups, including IDPs.

• Horn of Africa. The Development Response to Displacement Impacts Project (DRDIP) in the Horn of Africa improves access to basic social services, expands economic opportunities, and enhances environmental management for communities hosting refugees.

• Kenya. The World Bank is working with the national and county governments in Kenya to channel climate finance and decision-making to people at the local level to design solutions that meet their specific needs. Through the Financing Locally Led Climate Action program (FLLoCA), county governments are supported to work in partnership with communities to assess climate risks and identify socially inclusive solutions that are tailored to local needs and priorities. The FLLoCA Program in Kenya provides the first national-scale model of devolved climate finance that can be replicated in other countries.

• Rwanda. The Rwanda Quality Basic Education Project has incorporated disability-inclusive design within the national school infrastructure expansion (additional 22,500 classrooms and 31,000 toilets) funded by the project. This includes classroom access using ramps, spacious latrines to accommodate wheelchairs, ramps and access features within school compounds, and accessible blackboards for students and teachers with disabilities. The project is further supporting teacher training to support children with disabilities and accessible learning materials.

• Somalia. Jointly undertaken with the United Nations, the Special Financing Facility for Local Development in Somalia pilot project aims to strengthen government systems, visibility and legitimacy through providing basic infrastructure and services. Specifically, this project supports the Ministry of Finance to procure and supervise small capital grants identified by communities and the emerging federal states, and to strengthen the emerging federal architecture in a country coming out of 20 years of conflict.

The World Bank’s Global Department for Social Development undertakes analytical work that explores key social development issues. Recent analyses and programs include:

• Social Sustainability in Development: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century seeks to advance the concept of social sustainability and sharpen its analytical foundations. The book emphasizes social sustainability’s four key components: social cohesion, inclusion, resilience, and process legitimacy.

• The World Bank supports several programs and interventions that facilitate the full inclusion of persons with disabilities. In June 2018, the World Bank launched its first Disability Inclusion and Accountability Framework for mainstreaming disability across Bank projects and practices. The World Bank Group Commitments on Disability-Inclusive Development, announced in July 2018, build on the WBG’s ongoing efforts for disability inclusion and aim to accelerate action at scale toward disability-inclusive development.

• Social Cohesion and Forced Displacement: A Synthesis of New Research presents new evidence from 26 background studies on forced displacement and social cohesion to expand the current knowledge base on how to prevent social conflict and promote social cohesion in forced displacement contexts.

• The expanded Equality of Opportunity for Sexual and Gender Minorities (EQOSOGI) report assesses laws and regulations that affect the lives of sexual and gender minorities in 64 countries in six important areas of their life: education, employment, access to public services and social protection, civil and political inclusion, protection from hate crimes, and from being criminalized.

• Inclusion Matters: The Foundation for Shared Prosperity is one of the most comprehensive reviews of social inclusion available. It provides a frame of reference for policymakers, academics, activists, and development partners to help understand and move toward social inclusion. In India, a programmatic platform called “Social Inclusion and Gender Cluster” applies recommendations from the report.

• A May 2018 working paper on Community-Driven Development: Myths and Realities that reviews recent evidence on the utility of CDD programs for helping governments improve the lives and futures of the poor.

• Indigenous Latin America in the Twenty-First Century shines new light on the situation of Indigenous Peoples across the region and concludes that, despite important advances, indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by poverty and continue to face widespread economic and social exclusion.

• Released in August 2018, the Afro-descendants in Latin America: Toward a Framework of Inclusion report is an important step toward better understanding the conditions in which Afro-descendants live to help foster social inclusion and improve their economic situation across Latin America. 

• Opening the Black Box: The Contextual Drivers of Social Accountability provides guidance to strategically support citizen engagement at the country level and for a specific issue or problem in challenging country contexts.

• Being Fair, Faring Better: Promoting Equality of Opportunity for Marginalized Roma focuses on Roma across the EU member countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with substantial Roma populations. It notes that inequalities between Roma and non-Roma are striking and usually start early in life and often reflect “hard-wired” family circumstances.

• A Set of Proposed Indicators for the LGBTI Inclusion Index is a joint World Bank-UNDP publication that provides background for measuring inclusion for LGBTI people and proposes a range of indicators to measure LGBTI inclusion.

Last Updated: Mar 18, 2025