The World Bank Group’s Board of Directors formally endorsed a new strategic partnership for Haiti in March 2025, committing approximately $320 million in grant financing for the 2025-2029 period to support economic and social recovery. The new strategy, developed with Haitian stakeholders, focused on building resilience among the most vulnerable populations, mitigating further deterioration of human capital and physical infrastructure, and laying a foundation for longer-term development when security conditions permitted.
The strategy reflected the World Bank’s assessment that conventional development programming could not be implemented in Haiti’s current security environment and that the institution needed to adapt its approach — working through community-based organizations, supporting basic service delivery through non-state channels where necessary, and focusing on protective investments that would preserve human capital through the crisis period.
Priority areas for the $320 million included food security and agricultural productivity support, basic service delivery in health and education, climate resilience, and creating conditions for private sector activity. Each priority was designed to address immediate crisis consequences while building the foundations for recovery when security and governance conditions improved.
Haitian development specialists who engaged with the strategy development welcomed the Bank’s continued commitment while noting that $320 million over five years was inadequate to the scale of Haiti’s development needs and that the strategy’s effectiveness would ultimately depend on the security improvement that was the precondition for virtually every development goal it identified. The Bank’s engagement was important; the conditions for making it effective remained beyond the Bank’s direct control.