Economics & Development

Yemen Health Nutrition and WASH Project for Republic of Yemen has the development objectives to deliver integrated health, nutrition and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services in targeted areas, strengthen disease surveillance and outbreak response, and build institutional capacity. Component 1: Delivery of integrated health, nutrition, and WASH services supports provision of an integrated Minimum Service Package (MSP) across the continuum of care from community and primary to secondary and tertiary levels, including essential medicines, supplies and vaccines, nutrition commodities and WASH inputs, outreach by the Community Primary Health Care Network and community health workers (Community Health Worker, CHW), service quality improvement through supportive supervision, referral strengthening, selective equipment for basic and comprehensive emergency obstetric and neonatal care, and reinforcement of the cold chain; it includes social and behavior change communication (Social and Behavior Change Communication, SBCC) delivered through the National Center for Health Education and Information to promote healthy diets, hygiene, breastfeeding, and care seeking, and expanded nutrition-specific services such as multiple micronutrient supplementation, calcium, intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy, deworming, infant and young child nutrition counseling, vitamin A, oral rehydration salts with zinc, micronutrient powders, delayed umbilical cord clamping and kangaroo mother care; Sub-component 1.2: Rehabilitating Infrastructure and WASH systems finances climate-resilient upgrades at priority primary health centers, including solar-powered water supply, rainwater harvesting, on-site treatment and low- or no-water sanitation to improve infection prevention and control and service continuity; Sub-component 1.3: Multi-Sectoral Convergence through Geographic Accelerator Districts coordinates World Bank operations to co-locate cash for nutrition and livelihoods with health, nutrition, and WASH services, pilots a community-level convergence scorecard for course correction, and finances intensified last-mile outreach and follow-up of high-risk households. Component 2: Support to prevent and respond to communicable disease outbreaks strengthens nationwide prevention, detection, and response through maintenance of the Electronic Integrated Disease Early Warning System (eIDEWS), deployment of district and governorate rapid response teams using the 7-1-7 timeliness approach, support to Public Health Emergency Operations Centers (PHEOC), enhanced diagnostic capacity of Central Public Health Laboratories (CPHL) with equipment, reagents and quality systems, continued Integrated Nutrition Surveillance System (INSS), cholera preparedness and response, and targeted emergency water trucking and water quality testing linked to surveillance. Component 3: Systems building for sustainable delivery of health and nutrition services establishes a consolidated Systems Strengthening Plan with institutional benchmarks to enhance planning, budgeting and domestic resource mobilization, governance and data use at the Ministry of Public Health and Population and subnational levels, strengthens facility quality teams and digital health, and develops a National Health Workforce Development Plan; Sub-component 3.1 focuses on national and subnational institutional capacity, while Sub-component 3.2 expands workforce skills through in-service mentorship and e-learning, diploma and pre-service training via the Yemen Medical and Health Specialization Council and governorate health institutes, deployment of rotating specialists, field epidemiology training at the National Public Health Institute, and standard GBV first-line support using the WHO LIVES approach; community midwifery training is scaled to expand female providers in rural areas. Component 4: Project management covers supervision, monitoring and evaluation, third-party monitoring, fiduciary and environmental and social risk management, and capacity building for a Technical Unit (TU) to enhance national stewardship. Component 5: Contingent Emergency Response Component (CERC) provides a mechanism for rapid reallocation to address eligible emergencies through an agreed operations manual.

Poverty reduction rarely progresses in countries affected by conflict and forced displacement. Mechanisms to target social assistance to reach the poorest households in such settings are therefore badly needed. This paper explores patterns of social assistance targeting using unique household survey data covering people inside and outside displaced person camps in the Central African Republic. The findings show that assistance is categorically targeted and not directed to those most in need. Internally displaced persons in camps are significantly more likely to receive social assistance than people living outside camps—including out-of-camp internally displaced persons—regardless of their level of monetary consumption. Meanwhile, people with lower monetary consumption are no likelier to receive social assistance than those with higher consumption levels. As a result, internally displaced persons in camps who are in the top consumption quintile are more than twice as likely to receive social assistance as those outside camps in the bottom consumption quintile. This means that some extremely vulnerable households are excluded from assistance. Moreover, these patterns could create perverse incentives to enter and remain in camps, especially as it emerges that those who have been in camps longer are more likely to receive social assistance. Simulations reveal that targeting social assistance based on monetary welfare could protect the most vulnerable better by reducing the depth and severity of poverty. The results underline the need to find practicable mechanisms to reach the poorest people in conflict-affected settings, both inside and outside camps.

The minutes correspondents to IFC Project ID 50776.

The objective of the Additional Financing (AF) of the Building Opportunities and Outcomes in Social Protection and Youth Employment Project is to enhance economic opportunities and strengthen resilience of the poor and vulnerable. The AF will leverage BOOST‑You and Baxnaano’s established delivery systems to rapidly scale up and increase the transfer value of health and nutrition co-responsibility cash transfers for early response using government‑led platforms. The Federal Republic of Somalia’s frequent and unpredictable climatic shocks affect nearly half of the population and are a major driver of displacement, threatening increased food insecurity, displacement and attrition of human capital for shock affected communities and households. To date, Baxnaano has delivered emergency cash transfers (ECT) to 661,000 households (3.9 million individuals) in response to climate-related shocks. The AF aims to expand health and nutrition linked early response support to a further 83,000 drought affected households (498,000 individuals) to complement ongoing emergency operations. The use of the USR, SPDS, and objective geographical and proxy means test‑based targeting represents a transformational shift in Somalia’s crisis response architecture, enabling transparent, safe, and accountable delivery of assistance while reducing risks of aid diversion. In a next step, a dynamic update mechanism will ensure that the USR remains relevant and can continue to be used for shock-response with up to-date records.