The Hague, March 31, 2009 ─ Building the legitimacy, capacity, and credibility of the state is vital to foster peace and development in Afghanistan and needs to top the agenda of the international community, said World Bank Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, speaking today at the International Conference on Afghanistan in The Hague, Netherlands. Read full text of the speech
Okonjo-Iweala said the gap between the expectations of the Afghan people and the ability of their government to deliver services is widening rather than narrowing.
“Legitimacy needs to be earned by delivering basic services to citizens,” Okonjo-Iweala told the conference. “The first priority among basic services is security – so that people can begin to live something closer to a normal life. But security needs to go hand in hand with development and tangible improvement in the livelihoods of all Afghans. There have been remarkable successes in delivering public services in Afghanistan. They need to be built upon and scaled up.”
Afghanistan’s leadership had a vision for national programs from the start, for providing basic health services, education, rural infrastructure, and microfinance, said Okonjo-Iweala. She pointed to the doubling of functioning health care facilities, the decline in infant mortality, and the six-fold increase of children in school, now numbering 6 million, 35 percent of them girls.
She also made an urgent call for more funding to the National Solidarity Program (NSP), a World Bank supported community-led reconstruction and rural infrastructure initiative which has reached over 22,000 villages – about 68 percent of the rural population.
“Annual expenditures for NSP are now around $90 million a year. We could scale up to $300 million a year if funding were available,” she said. “Remaining steadfast on NSP and other national programs such as education and health would allow Afghan communities to feel that, year in and year out, their government is meeting their needs, in other words becoming a legitimate State.”
The international community was challenged to renew its focus on improving the effectiveness with which aid is utilized in Afghanistan and Okonjo-Iweala urged support for sound national programs, with donors working through rather than around government and pooling resources. She cited the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) as a good example of a more harmonized donor approach and regretted the fact that two-thirds of international development assistance still bypasses the government’s budget.
Because security crosses borders, it is also imperative that the security-development nexus be also examined in a regional context, Okonjo-Iweala said. The scope for investments in regional transport, energy, and water resource management is extraordinary, Afghanistan being at a historical geographic crossroads. This is where the World Bank and other development partners are active, she said. For example, the World Bank is helping with border management, customs and trade and transit treaties with neighboring countries, especially Pakistan.
Okonjo-Iweala said the gap between the expectations of the Afghan people and the ability of their government to deliver services is widening rather than narrowing.
“Legitimacy needs to be earned by delivering basic services to citizens,” Okonjo-Iweala told the conference. “The first priority among basic services is security – so that people can begin to live something closer to a normal life. But security needs to go hand in hand with development and tangible improvement in the livelihoods of all Afghans. There have been remarkable successes in delivering public services in Afghanistan. They need to be built upon and scaled up.”
Afghanistan’s leadership had a vision for national programs from the start, for providing basic health services, education, rural infrastructure, and microfinance, said Okonjo-Iweala. She pointed to the doubling of functioning health care facilities, the decline in infant mortality, and the six-fold increase of children in school, now numbering 6 million, 35 percent of them girls.
She also made an urgent call for more funding to the National Solidarity Program (NSP), a World Bank supported community-led reconstruction and rural infrastructure initiative which has reached over 22,000 villages – about 68 percent of the rural population.
“Annual expenditures for NSP are now around $90 million a year. We could scale up to $300 million a year if funding were available,” she said. “Remaining steadfast on NSP and other national programs such as education and health would allow Afghan communities to feel that, year in and year out, their government is meeting their needs, in other words becoming a legitimate State.”
The international community was challenged to renew its focus on improving the effectiveness with which aid is utilized in Afghanistan and Okonjo-Iweala urged support for sound national programs, with donors working through rather than around government and pooling resources. She cited the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) as a good example of a more harmonized donor approach and regretted the fact that two-thirds of international development assistance still bypasses the government’s budget.
Because security crosses borders, it is also imperative that the security-development nexus be also examined in a regional context, Okonjo-Iweala said. The scope for investments in regional transport, energy, and water resource management is extraordinary, Afghanistan being at a historical geographic crossroads. This is where the World Bank and other development partners are active, she said. For example, the World Bank is helping with border management, customs and trade and transit treaties with neighboring countries, especially Pakistan.
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