In Accordance With The SMO Below I Visited New York October 6 And Delivered The Bank's Intervention To The UN Third Committee,

On October 6th 2003, the World Bank New York Office hosted a small group lunch and dialogue to discuss the World Bank’s draft Social Development Strategy with Judith Edstrom, World Bank Sector Manager, Social Development Department. The dialogue followed on the initial presentation to the UN in February 2003 of the concept of the Strategy by Social Development Director Steen Jorgensen. Present from World Bank: Judith Edstrom, Sector Manager, Social Development Department. Eduardo Doryan, Special Representative to the United Nations and Nina Bhatt, Consultant, Social Development Department.

In the dialogue, Ms. Edstrom presented the current elements of the new World Bank Social Development (SD) Strategy now being prepared for Bank Board approval. The Strategy outlines how the Bank will work with countries to address their social development challenges and ensure that Bank projects and programs integrate principles of social sustainability. It sets a vision, objectives, and course of action for the longer term and suggest specific actions, targets, and institutional measures for the next five years.

Summary of Discussion

Discussion and questions by the participants related to issues of: defining social development; ensuring its acceptance vis a vis economic development, especially as it relates to economic production; and how the Bank can best meet the challenges of social development, among others.

Issues of Definitions: The question of how the Bank’s definition of social development differs from that of the United Nations was raised. It was mentioned that the Bank’s focus on cohesion, inclusion and social accountability differed from the United Nation’s definition of social development which emphasized social justice, empowerment, participation, and the distribution of power.

Governmental incentives to embrace the SD Strategy: It was asked how the Bank proposed to create incentives to country governments to implement the strategy without imposing conditionalities. The importance of ensuring that client countries were comfortable with the strategic directions was raised.

Social Development and Vulnerability: It was asked how the Bank determines or categorizes “vulnerable” persons or groups, and whether the category of “vulnerability” at times could be an externally imposed category. On the same subject, it was asked whether a focus on “vulnerable” peoples may unintentionally result in their experiencing marginality elsewhere.

Bank capacity to implement the strategy: It was asked what the extent of the Bank’s capacity to implement the strategic directions was and whether this would entail the Bank doing less of other projects and programs in the future. The issue of the “Bank culture” was also raised in regard to whether this ought to change so as to ensure a more central place for social development.

The Social and Economic dimensions of development: It was mentioned that social development still experiences a degree of marginality when compared to economic development and that to address this, the culture and operating environmental of the international context had to be examined. As an example, the greater importance given to the Second Committee of the General Assemble compared to the Third Committee (dealing with social issues) was mentioned. It was suggested that the Bank wide strategy address this subject directly.

Alignment of international statistics and the principles of the Bank wide Strategy: It was mentioned that the International Group of Statisticians abided by the principles of cohesion, inclusion, and accountable institutions – that these three basic strategic concepts comprised the fundamental principles of statistics as did the strategy. Judith Edstrom, Sector Manager for Social Development responded to the issues above. She stressed the importance of social development at the Bank, and emphasized that all Bank financed projects, programs and policies had to be informed by the principles of social development. Ms. Edstrom remarked that Social Development at the Bank was focused on accomplishing the MDGs, and that the MDGs provided guiding principles. Ms. Edstrom mentioned that Social Development at the Bank wanted to engage in good social analysis which was one way to mitigate emphasis on social safeguards work.