Sonia why did you leave

Thank you again for accepting our invitation, it is a pleasure to meet you. I will now pass the floor to my colleague Heidi who will start the first section of the interview. Heidi : Thank you Camelia. So, the World Bank group is known worldwide as a major actor in global development, providing financial products and technical assistance, helping countries to share and apply innovative knowledge and solutions to the challenges they face. Sonia : The World Bank was created in and it has funded over We work in all major areas of development.

It provides a series of financial products, undertakes analytical and advisory services to inform the development agenda and provides technical assistance to governments. The World Bank helps countries to share and apply innovative knowledge and solutions to the challenges that they face. Now, the Financial, Competitiveness and Innovation FCI Global Practice is the practice that deals with access to markets, and access to finance, and market approaches for economy.

So, we look at the private sector development; we look at the innovation policies; we look at competition policies; how we really help countries to get access to markets these markets can be local markets, regional markets or external markets ; how we can really increase and deepen the financial sector of a country. FCI works on strengthening market infrastructures and ensures households and firms have access to financial services.

FCI looks at the regulations of the banking institutions; we are now working a lot on digitalization; we are looking at access to credit; access to different financial products; which type of products can support innovation and support the creation of an enabling environment for business to be competitive.

We are looking at these issues to foster private-sector led growth and help create markets in client countries. Heidi : Thank you. The next question is a bit connected with what you were saying because you just told us that all is linked with development. So, about this concept - development - which definition best applies in the context of migration, according to you? Sonia : There are several institutions, several organizations working on migration, but the World Bank works on migration applying the development lens.

So any intervention that we do on migration is applying the development lens of the World Bank. For example, what are the main challenges of migration now?

The income gaps differential; the demographic changes; climate change; conflict and fragility. In we wrote a paper to the board where we put what the four roles of the World Bank are in applying this development angle to migration. The first role, we have to address the fundamental drivers of migration and remittances, through bank support to development.

The other roles are: ii maximizing benefits of migration and remittances and supporting the migration-related Sustainable Development Goals; iii generating knowledge for policy making and countering negative public perceptions; and iv financing programs to support safe and regular migration, including support for host countries dealing with migrant inflows. What are the drivers of migration? Income differential. Our projects trying to reduce the income differential is the way that we are addressing our projects to reduce poverty.

The second driver of migration I mentioned to you is the demographic challenges. In Africa we have a huge demographic bulge that is a driver of migration. Youths need to find jobs and where are they going to be finding jobs?

And then finally the other driver of migration is climate change. Climate change is a very important driver of migration, the World Bank prepared a study which is called Groundsswell. The study found that the major climate change will create a lot of internal migration, because we have seen an increase in the number of droughts, increase in the floods, and other slow on-set events that would drive internal migration, but also some cross border migration.

So how can we address this? The World Bank is working on help to prevention and preparadeness in these countries because once the disaster comes, once the drought comes, it is a huge amount of money that it is needed for disaster relief with a big fiscal impact for the countries.

Everything is destroyed, not only human lives, but the whole system. So we are trying to do work in developing anticipatory actions, and trying to include climate change initiatives into national development plans. The other driver of migration is fragility and conflict and we have seen that, we have seen the cases in South Sudan, we have seen the cases now in Venezuela, fragility and conflict and tensions is a driver of migration because people wanted to escape from those situations.

For example, to avoid conflict due to climate change, we are working on a regional project in the Horn of Africa A lot of the communities in Africa are pastoral and they have livestock, if there is a drought they move to another pasture area which could be in the neighboring country because they are looking for new pastures for the livestock.

These create tensions since there is scarcity of water and feeder. Thus, we have to look for intervention and how we can support also these pastoralists, with different interventions such as the provision of water, feeder, provide some support to the pastoralists. Following on the roles of the World Bank on migration, it tries to maximize the benefits of migration and remittances and support in the migration-related sustainable development goals.

What does it mean? For example, there are several sustainable development goals - SDGs - that are migration related indicators. One of them is the SDG Now, do you think that we have achieved that indicator? Still, we still need to do more progress to reduce these costs. At the global level, the average remittance costs is 6.

And in other corridors the costs are exorbitant. Now, do you think these need to be so high? With COVID, there has been a shift from sending remittances in cash to using digital technology The World Bank is working with countries to reduce the cost of remittances To reduce costs, it is important to increase competition, a country needs more companies entering into the market, and remove the regulatory barriers. Several migrants from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are charged incredible amounts of their wages even like 17 months, 24 months, up to three years of their salary.

They need to pay to the recruiter this amount of their salary. Anecdotal evidence showed that the recruitment costs have increased. This is one of the SDGs that the Bank is trying to work with countries to reduce these costs.

The other SDGs are also affecting migration, such as access to education since this indicator has to be migrants inclusive, refugees inclusive; access to health; reducing poverty. So, all of those indicators are also important. The third area that the Bank works on migration and development is that we work on generating knowledge for policy making and countering negative public perceptions. For example, when COVID started, all the economies were closed, there was lockdown in several countries.

I work in Somalia. Somalia has a high risk for antimony laundering and counter-finance terrorism, so the country does not have correspondance banks. Open in the sending countries and open in the destination countries. And in Somalia, the World Bank recommended to declare MTOs as essential services so people can go and pick up the money and receive the money.

This is an example of policy evidence based. And finally we finance programs to support safe and regular migration. This is the focus on migration, but everything that the World Bank does in development has also an aspect of that. Heidi : Thank you so much, you just answered the next question in a very organized way so thank you very much it was just like … easy to follow and the question looked so difficult. Thank you! Could you tell us when and how your experience at the World Bank Group started?

Sonia : Well, I came to the World Bank as a research assistant of my professor who was spending his sabbatical at the institution. I was studying at the University of Pennsylvania. The director of the International Development and Appropriate Technology came on sabbatical to the World Bank for one year. He brought me to the World Bank to be his research assistant to work on the East-Asia miracle report. I worked on the technology and productivity of all the firms and the main policies that explain the growth and development in East-Asia.

The World Bank offered me the opportunity to work in both research and operations. I started in the Research Department, and then I moved to undertake some operations. Then, I returned to research and worked on some research on migration. I enjoy having the opportunity to work on the policy side and developing projects as well undertaking diagnostics and analysis, and continue doing research.

However, what I try to do is not research for research as a blue sky research, but really how we can apply that research to respond to key policy questions that our clients need to address. I have always worked on the areas of the private sector development, technology, and trade.

I started working on trade. I knew migration, I worked on those areas but not so much. Well, we did the paper, the paper was published in the journal and it was very well received and since then I have been working on migration, remittances and diaspora.

It was in The Chief Economist is also a professor and very good economist and also, very close friend of my professor that brought me from the University of Pennsylvania. So whatever you do you continue working on migration.

Responding to your question: What is my work on Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation I am going to give you three examples: i I work on access to finance so one example is I prepared a feasibility study to create an index weather insurance for livestock.

This study is for Somalia, where livestock represents 60 percent of their foreign income. This is a very technical product. The second example, it is my work on refugees. We are developing some pilots to provide access to finance and markets in two refugee settlements through digitalization of the SACOs, training women to become agents-banking and linking refugees to markets. We are working on developing digital products for refugees. On private sector development, the World Bank is supporting refugees and host populations to access to markets and working at improving business environment and reducing the facto barriers.

Camelia : Thank you, I think you have answered both questions. So I will pass the floor now to Heidi, for the third set of questions. So, your participation in the Cost Action Women on the Move is a unique opportunity for us to look at migration and gender through a different perspective, related to development questions.

How did you hear about this Action and why have you decided to join? Sonia : Well, my colleague, , Kathleen Beegle who is a research manager wrote to me. Marie-Ruiz had approached Kathleen and she thought that since I worked on migration, the network could be of a great help.

Kathleen is an excellent researcher, she is an specialist on poverty person, she is the manager on the Health and Human Development. We had a conversation, she explained to me what was the network about, what is the aim and the goal of this network and I was very excited because it has the multidisciplinary approach; The network has colleagues working on sociology, other member have the historical perspective, it is about Europe and migration.

Since migration is very multidisciplinary, you cannot approach it from only one perspective. It is an excellent network since it allows us to exchange with a different perspective. Gratifying because even the participation at the social events is very enriching.

I participated in some of the happy hours that have been very innovative. They have provided me the opportunity to meet very nice people. It was excellent. I think now I will have more time to participate in some of the lectures and other meetings that you have been organizing.

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