World Bank President Calls for New Approaches to Peacebuilding

October 23, 2015

Earlier this month, World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim joined Nancy Lindborg, President of the United States Institute of Peace, for a conversation about development in conflict zones.  I found Dr. Kim’s vision for the future, forged from his experience as a medical doctor, truly refreshing and visionary, particularly in his assessment of the connections between gender, development, and peace.  I commend this dynamic dialogue to my readers (and yes, they do talk briefly about Colombia, beginning at 18:36):

Dr. Kim is particularly eloquent when he talks about the importance of gender .  “Economic growth is about gender equality,” he says.  See the interview here as he teases out his arguments:

And finally, in the following video, Dr. Kim calls for a serious re-thinking of the international community’s approach to peace building:  “Our approach to linking development and humanitarian response to peacebuilding processes has just been terrible… We’ve thought that development is something that happens after the humanitarian crisis and after peace treaties are signed as opposed to something that has to happen at the same time.”  (See related article here.)

In particular, Dr. Kim discusses the need to design new approaches for dealing with refugee crises:  “Refugees are refugees for an average of 17 years now,” he notes. “These are not short-term problems. … We are trying to rethink how we help countries in conflict reestablish the social contract.”  His observations apply equally to the nearly six million internally displaced Colombians, and the need to construct long-term solutions.