 At the start of the new Millennium, the World Bank sees the involvement of civil society (CS) as central to achieving country ownership of development assistance. It places the principle of participation at the core of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers being developed by its borrowing members and of its own Country Assistance Strategies for those borrowers.
Because successful development depends on governments and communities "owning" their projects and programs, the World Bank encourages its client governments to work closely with domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society (CS) to strengthen participation by their own citizens who are being affected by Bank-financed projects. Additionally, a large majority of projects funded by the World Bank now involve CSO participation and all of the Bank's country strategies benefit from NGO consultations. A cadre of civil society specialists has been created within the Bank, some of whom have been deployed to over 70 Bank resident missions in borrowing member countries to facilitate civil society's engagement with the Bank's work.
Today, local and national CSOs collaborate on a broad range of the Bank's economic and sector activities in their countries and provide inputs to poverty assessments, national environmental action plans, and other key analytical tools. They also participate increasingly actively in national-level policy debates on issues such as gender, the environment, economic development, and public expenditures. In the Bank's safeguard policies for the environment, indigenous peoples, and resettled communities, there are now provisions for community participation in Bank operations. Significantly, as civil society participation in project development has increased, satisfactory outcomes for those projects have gone up.
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