LETTER TO THE WORLD BANK FROM THE IEACF NETWORK 
A letter sent by the IEACF Network to the World Bank in 2025.​

Anna Bjerde

Managing Director of Operations, World Bank

1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA

Washington, D.C., USA

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Subject: Letter to the World Bank from the Improved and Equitable Access Network on climate finance 

Dear Ms. Bjerde, 

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On behalf of the Improved and Equitable Access Network for climate finance, we congratulate your team at the World Bank for its work in developing a new strategy for fragility, conflict and violence. Your current strategy has been a formative document in enhancing the World Bank's engagement with countries affected by complex crisis and conflict, and it has influenced others across the development sector to scale up their efforts. 

The Network represents countries that are some of the most vulnerable to climate impacts, and are also affected by armed conflict and high levels of humanitarian need. This is no geographic accident. Our people are vulnerable to climate impacts in large part because the crises in our countries make it extremely difficult to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to climate hazards - as does a glaring gap in available resources. 

Between 2014 and 2021, states facing the most severe crises received just $2 per person in climate finance from some of the world's largest climate funds - compared to $162 per person for their non­crisis peers. We have long been calling for this gap to be closed, including most recently, in 2024, when governments representing 300 million people living in conflict- and crisis-affected states wrote to the heads of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the UN and the presidents of COP28 and COP29, with a concrete target for increased finance and political willpower to address this issue. 

As your team crafts the next steps in the World Bank's efforts to improve its effectiveness in and support for countries affected by conflict and crises, and to strengthen resilience, we urge you to foreground the climate challenges facing fragile and conflict-affected countries. If not addressed, these risks, and their interplay with underlying crises, humanitarian challenges, and conflicts threaten the World Bank's goal of a world free of poverty on a livable planet. 

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We stand ready to engage with your team, and to provide collective inputs and feedback, and look forward to continuing to work with you towards a positive, peaceful, sustainable future for all. 

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Yours Sincerely,

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H.E. Bihi Iman Egeh

Minister of Finance for the Federal Government of Somalia

Inaugural Chair, Improved and Equitable Access Network

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On behalf of representatives of countries attending the first strategy meeting of the Network (Republic
of Burundi, Republic of Chad, Republic of Iraq, Sierra Leone, Federal Republic of Somalia, Timor-Leste, Republic of Yemen).​​​​

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