Ukraine provides an illuminating example of a health system that has responded to a health shock in a way that both builds health system resilience and advances health system reforms. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Ukraine in early 2020, a set of major health financing and provider...

Trade can dramatically improve women's lives, creating new jobs, enhancing consumer choices, and increasing women's bargaining power in society. It can also lead to job losses and a concentration of work in low-skilled employment. Given the complexity and specificity of the relationship between...

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was living a learning crisis. Before the pandemic, 258 million children and youth of primary- and secondary-school age were out of school. And low schooling quality meant many who were in school learned too little. The Learning Poverty rate in low-and...

This evidence review is designed to support policy makers seeking to implement a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB). It synthesizes the latest global evidence of effectiveness of SSB taxes and summarizes international experiences with SSB taxation to-date. SSBs are non-alcoholic beverages...

This retrospective examines how the World Bank's strategic use of climate-related trust funds has enabled it to play an outsized role in catalyzing climate action worldwide for nearly 30 years. By looking back at the history of climate and carbon finance, with a focus on the pioneering role of...

The global COVID-19 vaccination campaign, the largest public health initiative ever undertaken, presents challenges unprecedented in scale, speed and specificities, especially in low and middle-income countries. In November 2020, anticipating the availability of safe and effective vaccines for...

In the face of the global economic crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the World Bank delivered the largest crisis response in its history. This evaluation assesses the Bank Group's early response to the economic crises caused by COVID-19, and examines interventions over the 15...

Following the magnitude (Mw) 7.8 Turkiye-Syria Earthquake on February 6, 2023 and the Mw 6.3 earthquake on February 20, 2023, the World Bank carried out a remote, desk-based assessment of the physical damages in Syria using the Global RApid post-disaster Damage Estimation (GRADE) methodology....