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.

Seventy years ago, 145 countries signed the 1951 Refugee Convention in the wake of World War II, when the displacement of millions of people across Europe shed light on the need for humanitarian protections for those forced to flee violence and persecution.

Since 1951, 50 million people have been protected under the Convention’s umbrella. Yet, today, the consensus that forged the Convention and the international cooperation that underpins it are being increasingly undermined.

Over the past several years, we have seen a decline in resettlement, a hardening of refugee inclusion and asylum policies, and humanitarian aid lagging behind needs, across the regions that once most firmly upheld these protections. This report outlines how the US and Europe were key players at the time of the Convention's creation - now is the time for these same actors to reinvigorate it.

When Returning to Normal Doesn’t Work for Half the World’s Population: How to Build Back Better