The World Bank yesterday said war-torn Afghanistan needs to build a more effective state to promote economic development and urged the international community to help in the process.
“Building an effective state that can provide security and services to all Afghan citizens and make government accountable to them is critical to achieving development results in Afghanistan,” the World Bank said in releasing a report ahead of the Paris Conference on Afghanistan on Thursday.
The report, Building an Effective State — Priorities for Public Administration Reform in Afghanistan, calls for a shift of government functions that are still performed by the international community, or are not performed at all, to strengthen Afghan institutions.
The Afghan government meets its donors in Paris with its most ambitious post-Taliban reconstruction plan on the table — a US$50 billion strategy that spans five years.
Its Afghanistan National Development Strategy envisages development of security forces and infrastructure and a new emphasis on agriculture among a range of goals.
Analysts say it is a realistic assessment of the needs still facing the destitute country seven years after the ouster of the extremist Taliban regime.
But the World Bank and others have raised concerns about how well the plan prioritizes its objectives and the corruption-dogged government’s capacity to handle such an enormous sum while keeping an eye on how well aid is spent.
The World Bank recalled yesterday that the Afghan government and the international community have been working closely together for the past six years to rebuild Afghanistan after more than two decades of conflict.
The development of an effective state is at the heart of the reconstruction agenda, the bank said, and public administration reform is intended to contribute to that effort by building up civil service, improving governance and service delivery at the local level, and making government accountable.
“It is vital to persevere with the longer-term task of building an effective state, one which can gradually take on more responsibility for Afghanistan’s future,” said Alastair McKechnie, World Bank director for the Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group.
He said the challenge lay in “finding innovative ways to improve service delivery to citizens as quickly as possible, while at the same time gradually improving the country’s own capacity to deliver services without large amounts of external expertise.”
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS