About The World Bank and Pop/RH

The World Bank’s Population Strategy has focused on:

• Building the capacity of World Bank staff in analytical work for policy dialogue and to bring a demographic perspective into the policy dialogue with countries as well as implementation of projects and be able to work through Bank instruments such as the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).
• Improving the quality and effectiveness of Pop/RH components that are part of large broader health sector projects.
• Strengthening internal partnerships with different sectors, such as gender, education, HIV/AIDS, and transportation, to address the multi-dimensional aspects of population and reproductive health issues our clients face.
• Strengthening the linkages between HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health
• Strengthening partnerships with technical agencies such as UNFPA, WHO, UNICEF, bilateral donors and NGOs.
• The three overall HNP sectoral goals within the Bank to address the challenges in population and reproductive health-related issues are:
• Ensuring that investments improve outcomes for the poor, with particular attention to vulnerable groups
• Enhancing the performance of health care systems by promoting equitable access to preventative and curative services
• Securing sustainable financing for services, including reproductive health and family planning.

The World Bank works with borrower countries and other donors to implement the agreements made at ICPD. 

Linking population to poverty reduction and human development:   Countries that need to slow population growth require sustained, synergistic support for family planning, child survival, maternal health, girls' education, women's empowerment and autonomy and gender equity.  Even where population growth, per se, is not an issue, demographic changes (rapid fertility decline, aging population, and urban growth) have critical implications for policies in social sectors (health, education, social security), as well as the environment, agriculture, employment, and basic infrastructure.

Adapting to diversity and change:  Population policies and reproductive health programs need to be adapted to diverse and changing demographic, economic, cultural and geographical conditions among regions, with special attention to the poorest countries and the most vulnerable population groups.

 

Being sensitive to country contexts:  Implementing a reproductive health approach that integrates family planning, maternal health, and prevention of sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDs poses special challenges. Reproductive health and family planning are culturally and politically sensitive topics. They require attitudinal changes among families, communities, and policymakers, as well as behavioral changes among couples (not merely individuals) and service providers.

 

Building on analysis and dialogue; providing sustained support:  For all countries, the World Bank's main comparative advantage is that it can facilitate analysis and dialogue to help borrowers understand how demographic shifts affect the agendas for human development and poverty reduction, and provide sustained support over the longer time frame required to deal with reproductive health issues.

 

Strengthening skills and partnerships: To be effective, the Bank needs to maintain an appropriate mix of core skills suited to the diverse and changing conditions of borrower countries and to deal with the cross-cutting dimensions of population and reproductive health issues. Staff development needs to be complemented by efforts to collaborate with the best expertise available outside the Bank.