The World Bank has increasingly involved itself in war and peace. However, how appropriate and effective is this engagement if it selectively ignores the politics of conflict?

In 2020, the World Bank released a milestone document to formalise their interventions into situations of war and peace called the Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence 2020–2025 (‘Strategy 2020-2025’). Since the 1990s, the World Bank has gradually expanded its mandate into lending and project financing in violent and conflict-affected contexts. Strategy 2020-2025 represents the culmination of this trend, with the Bank tripling its financial commitments to war contexts to US$18.7 billion between 2017 and 2020, and identifying conflict-related interventions as “a central priority” for the institution. The World Bank now designs programs, applies conditionalities, and advises governments in active warzones across the world.

The World Bank has been crucially involved in two contemporaneous theatres of violence–that of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s aggression against Palestinians in Gaza. The World Bank has closely engaged in both Ukraine and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (‘OPT’) since the early 1990s but has taken markedly divergent approaches as violence recently exploded in both; with the Bank taking a leading, active role in Ukraine, while becoming a passive observer to the carnage in Gaza. I argue that a central problem of the Bank’s political economy analysis it uses in its conflict-related work is its selective ignorance of the political.

The World Bank’s Active Conflict Moment: Russia Invades

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the World Bank mobilised billions in support of Ukraine, while loudly condemning Russia. As of November 2024, the World Bank has marshalled over US$50 billion to Ukraine, helping Ukraine to sustain its war effort, continue paying public servants, and support the economy. Although the World Bank could still do more, particularly by cancelling the debt Ukraine owes to it that will otherwise cripple its reconstruction prospects, without the Bank’s fundraising, loans and grants, and cooperation with donors, the Ukrainian economy would have collapsed.

Significantly, the World Bank also came out strongly in rhetorical condemnation of Russia’s invasion. On 1 March 2022, the World Bank released a statement with the IMF that emphasised it stood “with the Ukrainian people through these horrifying developments,” as the Bank organised a US$3 billion support package for the beleaguered country. A day later, the World Bank released its own, independent statement. In very clear, active language, the Bank blamed Russia for its “invasion of Ukraine and hostilities against the people of Ukraine” and stopped “all its programs in Russia and Belarus with immediate effect.” This clear condemnation of Russia, alongside punitive measures, was an unusual step for the typically politically deferential institution, as was the speed in which the Bank organised crucial support for Ukraine. The World Bank’s continued, clear identification of Russia as the violent party in the conflict, naming it “Russia’s War on Ukraine,” has helped internationally isolate Russia.

The World Bank Goes to Ground in Gaza

The World Bank’s response to Israel’s unprecedented destruction upon Gaza, which legal scholars, genocide experts, UN specialists, and several states via the International Court of Justice have argued constitutes genocide, has been in stark contrast to that of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The World Bank has deeply engaged in the OPT since the early 1990s, and described its role there as being “more central…than any other major post-conflict situation,” and the “intellectual leader within the donor community,” organising Western donor support, forging policy, setting up trust funds, and ensuring the survival of the Palestinian Authority (see Haddad here and Kanafani & Cobham for more). By 2021, the Bank had disbursed US$1.3 billion from its main Palestine-related trust fund to the OPT, while setting up yet another trust fund to improve public finances and fiscal stability.

Despite this long-standing engagement, the World Bank has gone missing over the last year. As Hamas and other armed groups attacked Israeli military installations and settlements in October 2023, the World Bank commenced their annual meeting just two days later. The October attacks “upended” the meeting, with the Bank making no public statements, instead writing to its staff that it “condemn terrorism in all its forms.” Two months later, the World Bank finally committed an overall, pitiful, $35 million package of emergency relief to Gaza, and subsequently framed its continued engagement in the OPT as part of its “mandate to remain actively engaged in fragile and conflict settings” as per Strategy 2020-2025.

By February 2024, as Israel decimated Gaza, the World Bank released a report on the economic impacts of “the Conflict in the Middle East.” At this point, Israel had killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians, had blockaded Gaza,  was contributing  to catastrophic levels of food insecurity, and had damaged/destroyed at least half of all buildings in Gaza. However, the Bank never identified Israel as the cause in its report. Instead, this report is replete with passive language and uses the erasing euphemism of “the Conflict in the Middle East” to describe Israel’s aggression against Palestinians in Gaza. This is even despite Israel destroying World Bank projects in Gaza (and doing so before with impunity), making a mockery of the institution.

It was only by March 2024, five months after Israel’s assault began, that the World Bank released an official statement. It consisted of one sentence that requested more humanitarian aid for Gaza. There were no further commitments nor acknowledgements that Israel was responsible for preventing the entry of aid, attacking aid workers, and carrying out a “starvation campaign.” Concurrently, the Bank released an interim damage assessment on Gaza, noting US$18.5 billion in direct damage to infrastructure, but never once identifying the Israeli military as the perpetrator. This assessment contained a “flash appeal” for member state donations, which had only reached US$907 million (74 percent of the aim), with no further plans by the World Bank to seek or provide additional funding.

Conclusion

In Ukraine, the World Bank raised billions and significantly contributed to isolating Russia internationally, while in Gaza the Bank has not secured sufficient aid and has actively obfuscated Israel’s role in the death and destruction encompassing the Strip. This is not a case of “whataboutism,” nor simply pointing out the hypocrisy of the Bank, but this goes to the suitability of the Bank as the peacebuilding institution that it claims to be.

Primarily, the World Bank is not prepared (or only selectively so) to address the politics of conflict. The Bank has failed to address Israel’s ongoing, illegal occupation of Palestine as the determinative factor in the OPTs’ “de-development,” a term famously coined by Sara Roy, and has instead found itself financing the occupation. Further, because the World Bank refuses to be involved with the politics of the Israeli occupation or with accusations of genocide, it cannot recognise that its interventions in the OPT have been in the context of a permanent conflict situation. The institution erroneously considered the OPT prior to October 2023 as “post-” or “pre-conflict” (even since 1993).

If the Bank is not prepared to engage politically in theatres of violence it should relinquish their much-flaunted role in war and peace detailed in Strategy 2020-2025. This might require confronting the obvious US influence at the Bank (despite a recent book inexplicably minimising this influence). Indeed, the World Bank’s own Independent Evaluation Group recommended in a 2010 report that the Bank should be involved more “politically” in the conflict, recognising Israel’s control of the OPT as the biggest obstacle to development. It is far past time for it to do so.

Elliot Dolan-Evans is a lecturer in International Political Economy and Public Law at Monash University. His research concerns the political economy of peacebuilding, with a special focus on the under-investigated role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.