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| January 15, 2002 | Tuesday | Shawwal 30, 1422 |
World Bank chief for steps to improve strategies
WASHINGTON, Jan 14: Country-owned poverty reduction strategies are critical in attacking world poverty and enhancing global security and peace, and the global community must develop concrete ways for improving the strategies’ impact on poor people, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn said in his opening remarks at the international conference on Poverty Reduction Strategies here Monday.
The meeting, which will last through Thursday, January 17, will bring together over 200 participants from developing countries, donor agencies and civil society groups tasked with finding ways to improve international poverty reduction efforts, said World Bank website.
“We can no longer afford to turn our backs on the world’s poorest,” Wolfensohn says in his remarks. “We are therefore presented today with both a tremendous opportunity and a stark challenge: to rededicate ourselves and our efforts to attacking the scourge of poverty and all its horrifying consequences for the poor and for all of us in our still too divided planet. We must strengthen the PRSP approach, but never forget that these and subsequent efforts must always be based on the aspirations of poor countries and poor people for a more fulfilling future.”
He said: “And our community of commitment has become even more important in the light of tragic recent events. In our post-September 11 world, the need to address poverty — and its consequences in terms of despair, alienation and violence — has become not only a moral imperative (which it surely is), not only a social and economic necessity (which it also surely is), but also a central concern for everyone who strives for national and global security and peace.”
“I therefore find it heartening today to see so many representatives of our developing member countries, of civil society, and of donors gathered together to deliberate about what has worked — and what has perhaps not worked, or not yet worked — in the first two years of early experience with the PRSP approach. We may have differences about some of the specifics of the approach. But I believe that we all share a common purpose — to do the best we can to support poor countries and poor people in their efforts to claim for themselves a better life, a better world,” he added.
He continued: “I mentioned a wider global community. It is right to pay tribute to all those who are not with us today who have participated in the PRSP approach — dedicated leaders, public officials and parliamentarians in poor countries; representatives of donors and international and local NGOs working at the grassroots; and most importantly, poor people themselves, who have helped to inform country poverty reduction strategies. They have all enriched our early experience with the approach. They deserve our thanks.”
“Looking back, it is astonishing how much has been achieved, given the scale of the task. As you know, the approach is rooted in the concept that countrie