Liberia is a low-income country with a GNI per capita (Atlas method) of 380 US dollars in 2017. After a period of conflict and instability, Liberia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an average annual rate of 6.2 percent during 2003-2013. The ebola virus disease (EVD) crisis of 2014-2016 and a drop in global commodity prices resulted in slower average annual GDP growth of 2.1 percent with per capita annual GDP growth at -0.4 percent during 2013-2017. As a post conflict country aiming to achieve sustained broad-based growth, Liberia faces several development challenges: large infrastructure gaps, poor education and health indicators, a large youth cohort, lack of economic diversification, and weak public institutions. The World Bank Group’s country partnership strategy had three pillars: (i) economic transformation; (ii) human development; and (iii) governance and public sector institutions. In addition, the CPS had two cross-cutting themes of capacity development and gender equality. The CPS focus areas and objectives were well aligned with the government’s agenda for transformation with a strong focus on infrastructure. The CLR provided a succinct assessment of the achievement of program objectives. It identified the increases in IDA lending attributable to the EVD outbreak. The CLR review agrees with the CLR lessons: (i) ensure government’s strong commitment to the CPF program through close alignment with the country’s development plans; (ii) adapt and apply a sound post-conflict and fragile country lens in the design of CPF programs for post conflict countries; (iii) keep an eye on medium-term goals even in the face of a crisis such as EVD; (iv) being selective about cross-cutting themes and including outcomes associated with these themes helps maintain the Government’s and Country Team’s focus on them throughout implementation. IEG provides the following additional lessons: (i) flexibility of the CPS program enabled the WBG to respond to the EVD crisis in a timely manner; and (ii) trust fund activities need to have a well-articulated strategic focus and explicit selectivity filters to ensure that they contribute to the achievement of CPS objectives; (Liberia)
Despite progress over the last two decades, girls still have on average lower levels of educational attainment than boys in many African countries, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels. Girls dropping out of school are more likely to marry or have children early, before they may be physically and emotionally ready to become wives and mothers. This may affect their own health. It may also affect that of their children since children of mothers younger than 18 face higher risks of dying by age five and being malnourished. They may also do poorly in school. Other risks for girls and women associated with a lack of education as well as child marriage include intimate partner violence and a lack of decision-making ability in the household. Through lower expected earnings in adulthood and higher fertility over their lifetime, a lack of education for girls as well as child marriage lead to higher rates of poverty for households. This is due to both losses in incomes and higher basic needs from larger household sizes. Low educational attainment for girls may also weaken solidarity in communities and reduce women’s participation in society. Lack of education is associated with a lower proclivity to altruistic behaviors, and it curtails women’s voice and agency in the household, at work and in institutions. This report documents the negative impacts of low educational attainment for girls, child marriage, and early childbearing for girls in Africa and some of their associated economic costs. The message is clear: educating girls is not only the right thing to do. It also makes economic and strategic sense for countries to fulfill their development potential. (World)
Despite progress over the last two decades, girls still have on average lower levels of educational attainment than boys in many African countries, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels. Girls dropping out of school are more likely to marry or have children early, before they may be physically and emotionally ready to become wives and mothers. This may affect their own health. It may also affect that of their children since children of mothers younger than 18 face higher risks of dying by age five and being malnourished. They may also do poorly in school. Other risks for girls and women associated with a lack of education as well as child marriage include intimate partner violence and a lack of decision-making ability in the household. Through lower expected earnings in adulthood and higher fertility over their lifetime, a lack of education for girls as well as child marriage lead to higher rates of poverty for households. This is due to both losses in incomes and higher basic needs from larger household sizes. Low educational attainment for girls may also weaken solidarity in communities and reduce women’s participation in society. Lack of education is associated with a lower proclivity to altruistic behaviors, and it curtails women’s voice and agency in the household, at work and in institutions. This report documents the negative impacts of low educational attainment for girls, child marriage, and early childbearing for girls in Africa and some of their associated economic costs. The message is clear: educating girls is not only the right thing to do. It also makes economic and strategic sense for countries to fulfill their development potential. (World)
Public financing of privately provided child care can allow for access to these services in places where public provision and capacity are low. However, the mechanisms of subsidy delivery will affect who benefits, and the overall cost-effectiveness of such subsidies. This paper sets out an ex-ante simulation model for estimating the benefit incidence of expanded capacity and enrollments resulting from different child care subsidy mechanisms. It combines a supply-side provider level and a demand-side household model in one simulation. The paper considers investment vs. operational monthly grants to child care providers, combinations of investment and operational grants, and demand-side vouchers to households. The model is applied to empirical data from child care centers and households in Turkey. The results reveal that the choice of the subsidy delivery model has a strong bearing on the benefit incidence and cost-effectiveness of the subsidy. In the case of Turkey, where significant supply-side constraints exist in the market, a demand-side voucher system is shown to be the least cost-effective subsidy delivery model. A targeted demand-side voucher does not necessarily deliver the most “pro-poor results,” and combinations show different benefits and costs. The proposed simulation model can be applied in other country contexts, with the only data requirements being microdata on the costs and pricing structure of child care providers, as well as household data with variables on household welfare and child care utilization. (Turkiye)
The objective of this report is to address the knowledge gaps for the first and second priority challenges and thereby contribute to the evidence-based policymaking on the labor supply and gender equality agendas. Specifically, the report explores the key labor market gender challenges such as occupational segregation (looking at segregation of current occupations and educational specializations) and the parenthood penalty (looking at differences in labor force participation, employment, and earnings for women and men with no children, 1 child, 2 or more children), using the nationally-representative individual-level Labor Force Survey (LFS) data in 2006-2016. The novelty of this study is that an LFS-based analysis that applies a conventional methodology of occupational segregation indicators and earnings regressions and decompositions in chapters two through four is complemented by an original analysis of job seeker profiles in chapter five, scraped from the largest online job portal in Moldova in June 2018, to examine the role of gender in labor market aspirations and expectations of young job seekers. Even though the third priority challenge (entrepreneurship) is also linked to the labor market and there are substantial disparities in the success rate of setting up a business as well as in the size and nature of businesses that Moldovan women and men lead (World Bank, 2014a), this report does not address the issue of entrepreneurship in detail due to LFS data containing only a very small sample of non-agricultural employers (either women or men) and very few relevant variables on this topic. Another limitation of this report is that it does not study the impact of international labor migration and remittances on labor market outcomes of remaining household members and other social and economic indicators in Moldova. Besedina and Levin (2016) and Stratan et al. (2013) find that migration and remittances are associated with lower labor force participation rates of remaining household members (who are more likely to be female, compared to households without migrants)and higher incidence of part-time employment as remittance recipients rationally reduce their labor effort. To answer the question whether migration and remittances contribute to gender inequalities in the Moldovan labor market, including gender gaps in labor force participation, employment and earnings, other data and further research are needed. Finally, the report contributes to the literature about the supply side of the Moldovan labor market whereas it draws on the findings of other studies on the labor demand developments. According to World Bank (2016b, c), rapid economic growth in recent years in Moldova was not accompanied by job creation, net job losses have taken place in most sectors and across regions, and only some categories of workers (predominantly skilled older male workers in urban areas) were able to benefit from access to higher-paying jobs in productivity increasing firms. The report is intended for technically-inclined readers from government agencies, think tanks and researchers active in gender and labor market domains. The Executive summary summarizes the findings of the analysis in non-technical language for the general public and policy makers. Annex one provides technical details on which methodology and data are used for the analysis. (Moldova)
The development objective of Protection of Essential Health Services Project is to increase the utilization and quality of an essential package of health services in South Sudan, with a particular focus on the former states of Upper Nile and Jonglei. Some of the negative impacts include: (i) inequitable availability and access to service delivery in areas that are not highly vulnerable; (ii) poor hygiene, water and sanitation in health facilities negatively impacts safe delivery of health care services; (iii) Implementing partners (IPs) are not prepared nor equipped to respond to emergencies, including disease outbreaks; (iv) ghost workers and ghost health facilities included in the project fraudulently consuming budgetary resources through inflated staffing and facility costs; (v) expired and damaged drugs negatively affecting communities in the areas where the project is implemented; (vi) inequitable availability and access to service delivery in areas that are not highly vulnerable; and (vii) shortage of suitably qualified staff or presence of lowly skilled medical staff. Some of the mitigation measures include: (i) mapping of functional health facilities and selection of those to be supported, considering, local administrative boundaries, government and non-government (IO) controlled areas, population size, cultural characteristics of the population, and conflict dynamics; (ii) develop waste management plans for each health facility; (iii) train IPs in emergency preparedness and response, including infectious disease surveillance and response (IDSR); (iv) physical verification and mapping of health facilities by community mobilizers as well as an auditing firm; (v) conduct a diagnostic assessment to assess how the supply chain can be improved to ensure adequate delivery to health facilities located in Sudanese People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) areas as well as other hard-to-reach areas; (vi) strengthen community engagement and dialogue to reduce targeting of health institutions when conflict occurs; and (vii) United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will continue to work closely with United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to utilize their channels for lobbying for access in conflict areas to allow programmatic assessments and interventions, monitoring and vital distribution of life saving drugs by UNICEF and its partner’ access. (South Sudan)
This report documents the challenge of achieving inclusive education in Africa. Primary school completion rates are 10 percentage points lower for girls with disabilities than for girls without disabilities. For boys, the disability gap in primary completion rates is 13 points. Gaps are also large for secondary education completion and children with disabilities are much more likely to never enroll in school at all. Across the board disability gaps have been steadily increasing over the last 20 years. Even when children with disabilities manage to remain in school, they perform on average less well on mathematics and reading tests. This is one of the reasons why only half of children with disabilities of primary school completion age can read and write, and only one in four complete secondary school. Multiple factors lead to disability gaps in education. According to teacher perceptions on the reasons why children drop out of school, lack of adequate infrastructure for children with disabilities is a major issue. In addition, among a dozen types of in-service training provided to teachers, training related to inclusive education is the least commonly provided. Finally, screening for disabilities in school remains very rare. In essence, children with disabilities are being left behind by efforts to improve education opportunities for all. Investing in the education of children with disabilities is required from a rights perspective , but it is also a smart investment. Indeed, apart from a wide range of other benefits from educational attainment, the labor market returns to education for individuals with disabilities are large and similar order to the returns observed for other individuals. (World)
The present output was carried out under the reimbursable advisory services (RAS) agreement concluded for the development of plans for the de-institutionalization of children deprived of parental care and their transfer to community-based care, between the world bank and the national authority for the protection of children’s rights and adoption (AMPDCA), on may 12, 2016. the agreement covers the technical assistance for the ANPDCA project development of the plan for the deinstitutionalization of children in residential care and their transition to community-based care – code SIPOCA 2, funded by the European social fund under the operational program for administrative capacity. Between May-October 2018, the world bank team collected and analyzed the data needed to prepare the sixth output under the agreement (output 6). This report is a continuation of the first five outputs, already submitted to the ANPDCA (in March, June and December 2017 and June, September 2018), this being the last output under this agreement. output 6 incorporates the ideas and comments formulated during eight regional consultation seminars (one per each region of the country), organized in July 2018 by the national authority for child protection and adoption (ANPDCA), attended by over 400 representatives of county and local authorities, as well as NGOs from this field. Output 6 are (i) Analysis of the survey of families of institutionalized children living in source communities, (ii) identification of children exposed to the risk of separation in at least 30 source communities, (iii) 30 plans for the development of preventative services in rural source communities, (iv) a plan for the monitoring and evaluation of closing Residential Centers, and (v) a dissemination report presenting the results of the RAS (Romania)
The Sahel Women’s Empowerment and Demographics Project of Benin has the objective to increase women and adolescent girls’ empowerment and their access to quality reproductive, child and maternal health services in selected areas of the participating countries, including theRecipients' territory, and to improve regional knowledge generation and sharing as well as regional capacity and coordination. This project is comprised of three components. (1) Improve Regional Demand for Reproductive Maternal Neonatal Child and Adolescent Health and Nutrition (RMNCAHN) Services and Increase Empowerment for Women and Adolescents. (2) Ensuring availability and sustainability of family planning services, including supply chain of modern contraceptives will be a key factor in accelerating the demographic transition in Benin. (3) National capacity in Benin will be built to collect, analyze, translate and use data that can inform population policy, investments in human capital and gender interventions. (Western Africa)
The adoption of the Law on the Protection of Children and Adolescents in 2019 represents a significant turning point in the evolution of Iranian criminal policy toward minors. This article examines the conceptual foundations, legal innovations, and structural implications of the statute with particular emphasis on the emergence of the category of “children at risk.” Moving beyond traditional offender-centered approaches, the law introduces a preventive and protection-oriented framework that allows state intervention prior to the occurrence of criminal harm. Through doctrinal legal analysis and criminal policy evaluation, the study explores how the legislation restructures the relationship between criminal law, social welfare institutions, and family responsibility. The findings indicate that the 2019 law expands the scope of criminal protection by criminalizing neglect and endangerment, establishing mandatory reporting obligations, strengthening institutional coordination, and introducing child-sensitive procedural safeguards. These reforms shift Iranian criminal policy from reactive punishment toward proactive prevention, positioning children as rights-bearing individuals whose vulnerability justifies early intervention. The law also reflects an attempt to reconcile domestic legal traditions with contemporary international child protection standards while maintaining doctrinal continuity within the national legal system. Despite these advances, the article identifies several structural challenges affecting implementation, including conceptual ambiguity in defining risk, tensions between preventive intervention and legal certainty, institutional capacity limitations, and the need to balance child protection with family autonomy. The study argues that the effectiveness of the reform depends not only on legislative innovation but also on sustained institutional development, professional training, and interpretative coherence. Ultimately, the 2019 law constitutes a paradigm shift in Iranian criminal policy by embedding preventive protection at the center of legal responses to childhood vulnerability. It establishes the foundation for a rights-based and preventive model of criminal justice that seeks to reduce victimization, promote social reintegration, and strengthen long-term child welfare.
Zeinab Forouzeshnia, Ebrahim Rajabi Taj Amir, Amir Ahmadi
