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The World Bank is a membership-based organization founded in 1944 as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), with the goal of facilitating post–World War II reconstruction and economic development among member countries. Since then, the enterprise has expanded to encompass five separate but closely associated development agencies—known collectively as the World Bank Group—that work together to alleviate poverty, hunger, disease, and illiteracy among the world’s disadvantaged populations. The World Bank Group organizations are owned by the governments of the member nations and are governed by boards of executive directors and boards of governors, which retain ultimate decision-making power over all financial, membership, policy, and other matters. The operations of the World Bank Group are carried out by more than ten thousand personnel—ranging from economists and financial analysts to engineers, social scientists, and policy experts—in more than 120 offices across the globe.

Foreign aid is a voluntary contribution of resources from states to other governments, international organizations, and populations of other countries provided to assist in overcoming distress. There is humanitarian and development aid. The former is mainly used for short-term emergency situations that cause massive human suffering, such as floods, droughts, and earthquakes. Its goal is to provide resources to help the recipient country to become democratic market economy. Aid contributions can be monetary or come in the form of technical assistance or material goods. Although it can save lives, especially of people in the developing world, such aid has also been criticized for distorting political and economic incentives in relatively poor states thereby exacerbating distress, rather than helping to cope with it. As of 2015 the United States provided the most foreign aid in net contributions worldwide. But when ranking aid by the percentage of gross national income, the United Arab Emirates was at the top of the list.

On January 12, 2010, a massive earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti, with a minimum of fifty-four aftershocks occurring over the next twelve days. The massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake toppled buildings, destroyed bridges and infrastructure, and resulted in the loss of an estimated 230,000 lives. The casualties of this natural disaster included nearly 300,000 injured, with an estimated 1 million Haitians left homeless. Beyond these immediate losses of life and shelter, as well as injuries, there were secondary risks of infections from untreated wounds, lack of sufficient medical care, lack of or limited food supplies, and lack of clean drinking water. Poor sanitary conditions for human waste threatened a variety of diseases, which would result in further deaths. The final major problem for Haiti was the incapacity and inability to adequately dispose of human remains in order to prevent the spread of disease.

The term developing nation is somewhat ambiguous; a standard, internationally recognized definition does not exist. However, the term usually refers to a low-income country, or a country in which the majority of the population lives in poverty and often cannot afford basic necessities. In comparison, developed nations are wealthier, more industrialized, and generally more advanced than developing nations. Other phrases often used to describe a developing nation are low-income country, less developed country, and third world country (although this phrase is considered outdated).

The series of mixed political priorities that led to the collapse of the U.S. and British plan to sponsor construction of the Aswan High Dam began at least as early as 1953. In the first years after the 1952 coup that ousted King Farouk I, attempts had been made to draw Egypt away from participating in the struggle against Israel and to move Cairo into a strategic alliance with the Western camp. Following failure of the British-initiated Middle East Defense Organization scheme (1950-1951), a different policy was introduced to elicit cooperation from Cairo’s new leader, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser.

On January 25, 1949, the Moscow Joint Communiqué was issued by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, as well as the heads of state of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. This document announced the founding of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon, or CMEA). It represented the Soviet rejection of the United States’ Marshall Plan as the framework for postwar reconstruction, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for a centralized system of diplomatic, economic, and military alliances in Eastern Europe designed to serve Soviet strategic interests. The so-called Molotov Plan, meant as an alternative to the Marshall Plan, marked the de facto division of Europe into two separate and mutually hostile blocs, a condition that was to last until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

With victory over Nazi Germany assured but still distant in early 1945, the United States and the United Kingdom began to envision the postwar era. Critical to their designs of winning the peace were programs such as the Bretton Woods system, which locked the value of the U.S. dollar to an ounce of gold, and the International Monetary Fund, which aimed to assist countries with balance-of-payment difficulties. Both plans sought to encourage and facilitate trade liberalization on an international scale. This was deemed all the more necessary after 1947, when relations soured with former wartime ally the Soviet Union. The United States then looked to shore up “democratic,” “free-market economies” in Western Europe to win a budding Cold War. An instrumental part of this new U.S. strategic endeavor was the European Recovery Program (ERP), known more commonly as the Marshall Plan.

Date Founded: 1956

The population of sub-Saharan Africa (a region composed of forty-seven nations south of the Sahara Desert, such as Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda) has suffered under the burden of infectious disease for decades. HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis cause millions of deaths in the region each year despite the availability of effective preventative measures and treatments throughout the developed world. Beyond the death toll, these diseases damage the social, economic and educational infrastructures throughout the region, further perpetuating the public health crisis.