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The World Bank's Strategy After the Arab Spring

‘Peace and stability in MENA is Now a Global Public Good’

Interview
Men repair a bridge near Mosul, Iraq.
In the aftermath of conflict reconstruction of infrastructure is essential. Here, men repair a bridge near Mosul, Iraq. Photograph: Sebastian Backhaus

Despite optimism for quick transitions after the so-called Arab Spring, the reality has been regional conflicts and stalled reforms. Janmejay Singh explains how peace and stability in the MENA have become the main focus for the World Bank.

zenith: What was the impact of the Arab Spring on the World Bank’s policy in the MENA region?

Janmejay Singh: In 2012 we revamped our strategy to look at what we thought we had been missing - inclusion, jobs and sustainable growth. In the years since, the context in the region has changed. We were all much more optimistic about the pace of transition and what would emerge after the Arab Spring. The reality in the region today is far more fragile: the Syrian conflict, the refugee crisis and the spread of ISIS and terrorist events across the region and beyond have forced us to rethink our strategic engagement.

 

How have the wars in the region affected your approach?

Most of all, people in the MENA region want to see peace, stability and prosperity. Our whole focus in MENA has shifted. In the past we were working on traditional development themes but trying to work around the conflict. Now we've turned that on its head, and we’ve oriented our strategy towards peace and stability, which are the fundamental development objectives of our new strategy. Development has a role to play before and after conflict, and can even play a big role during it.  For example, Iraq requested the Bank’s help to rebuild and restore essential service delivery in the cities it was liberating from ISIS.

 

Providing an immediate peace dividend in those places helps restore normalcy and strengthens the resolve to free other areas. We hope these conflicts will end soon, and once they do then the international community can come together and support the rebuilding of Syria and Yemen.

 

We also want to work towards the unfinished transitions in the Arab Spring countries. We need to move forward with all elements of renewing the social contract – jobs, quality service delivery, citizen engagement – so that there is a vision for the future. Looking into the literature of radicalisation, and why so many youth from countries, for example Tunisia, are fleeing and joining ISIS, we're seeing that a lot of long-standing grievances may be behind this, such as lack of development, lack of access, lack of jobs, lack of voice. If we make a dent in that, we can create – instead of a vicious cycle – a virtuous cycle that can put an end to the conflicts. Peace and stability in MENA is now a global public good – the whole world is impacted by the fragility and conflict happening there.

 

What are your procedures to ensure a programme benefits the whole community, and won’t disadvantage some?

For any development policy programme that we finance, we carry out a poverty and social impact analysis, to try and determine what the effects might be and build in to the design mitigation measures. It’s the same at the project level – we carry out environmental and social assessments that look at impacts that could emerge from, for example, an infrastructure project. After analysis we carry out consultation. It is recommended for at least policy level lending to have wide ranging consultations with all stakeholders, including beneficiaries. 

 

Finally, we have a very elaborate set of safeguard policies. There is currently an ongoing reform to modernise these, but it looks at issues such as resettlement and indigenous rights. The new framework will look at stakeholder engagement and have strengthened grievance mechanisms.

Queen Alia International Airport is a successful public-private partnership.
Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, Jordan, is a rare example of a successful public-private partnership in MENA.Photograph: Stian Overdahl

How do you ensure you aren’t amplifying the importance of the public sector and hampering private sector dynamism?

One focus of our new strategy is to improve the investment climate, including bringing in enabling legislation, policy reform and trying to open markets up for competition. We’ve also done a lot of analytical work in this area. Subsidy reform is another focus; these are a heavy fiscal burden, while analysis shows that these subsidies are not well targeted and also hurt private enterprise by distorting the economy towards capital intensive production.

 

Through both the IBRD and IFC we have set up projects that directly finance small and medium enterprises, to try to promote and foster greater entrepreneurship in smaller enterprises, because they can have the largest impact sometimes on creating jobs. We’re also trying to promote public private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure such as airports, ports and railways, to bring the private sector in to help develop them.

 

Your mandate is to deal directly with governments. In the case of a repressive regime, how do you ensure you aren’t emboldening it through your programmes? 

We're obliged by our charters to stay out of politics, we focus only on the development realm. We try to ensure that given our objective of eradicating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity, the programmes and projects we support address the development needs of populations, in any country context that we deal with. Our philosophy is that if you remain focused on the development side, and are actually achieving results for people, then you are doing your job.


Janmejay Singh is a senior strategy and operations officer in the office of the Vice President – Middle East and North Africa region at the World Bank. 

By: 
Stian Overdahl