| dc.description.abstract | Te world is becoming less safe and peaceful. According to the 2018
Global Peace Index prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace,
42 countries experienced an increase in the intensity of internal confict
over the past decade, twice the number of countries that have improved.
While progress is being made in certain areas—military spending
declined slightly, for instance—peacefulness deteriorated as the intensity
of confict worsened.
Confict has major costs, in terms of lives prematurely ended, human
sufering and forgone development and economic opportunities. A civil
war costs a medium-sized developing country the equivalent of 30 years
of GDP growth; it takes 20 years for its trade levels to return to pre-war
levels. To mitigate the long-term consequences of confict on growth
and poverty reduction, the World Bank Group is paying increasing
attention to countries afected by confict and violence. Since 2017, the
World Bank Group has doubled its fnancial support for countries facing current or rising risks of fragility, opened special windows for assistance to refugees and host communities, and developed new fnancial
instruments to support crisis preparedness and response. | |
