Nearly 100 asylum-seekers are arriving daily in Phoenix, fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries for the safety and freedom of the United States. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) and our partner organizations are providing critical humanitarian assistance to these families when they arrive, including food, shelter, and medical assistance.

Conflict in Yemen has unleashed one of the world’s most urgent humanitarian crises. Those with life-threatening illnesses, like Yousra, don’t have access to the treatment they need.

The geography of poverty is changing. Extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated in places characterized by fragility and violent conflict: by 2030, 85 percent of the extreme poor—some 342 million people—will live in fragile and conflict-affected states.1 Yet just one in five fragile states are on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).2 Meaningful progress on the goal of reducing global extreme poverty requires meeting the development needs of vulnerable populations in fragile contexts; but assistance in these contexts has traditionally been limited to short-term humanitarian aid, ill-equipped to address underlying development challenges. World Bank leadership, staff, and shareholders recognize that protracted crises and associated mass displacement and chronic extreme hunger, as well as threats from sudden-onset emergencies such as climate disasters and pandemics, threaten development progress. Driving progress in these complex environments is the only way that the World Bank will meet its twin goals of reducing global poverty and improving shared prosperity, and address the underlying drivers of some of the world’s most protracted crises.

Five years after the end of the conflict with the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq, many communities remain in need of humanitarian and longer-term assistance on the path to achieving durable solutions.