Zhou Yongmei: The World Bank remains central to reconstruction finance—but in Gaza, it no longer sets the rules.

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Zhou Yongmei, a former World Bank official who led the Fragiles States Group of the World Bank, examines how the Bank’s role in post-conflict reconstruction is evolving. Drawing on first-hand experience, she compares earlier cases such as Afghanistan and Iraq—where the Bank acted as a “gatekeeper” of governance standards—with the emerging Gaza model, in which it plays a more limited financial role.Rather than a simple institutional retreat, Zhou argues that this shift reflects a broader transformation in global governance: as great-power politics intensify, key decisions are increasingly made outside multilateral institutions, leaving them to provide financing rather than set the rules.Zhou Yongmei is now Professor of Practice in Institutional Development at the Institute of South–South Cooperation and Development (ISSCAD) and the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University, a role she has held since 2020. She received her PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999, specialising in new institutional and development economics. From 1999 to 2020, she worked at the World Bank, advising leaders in Africa and South Asia, managing the Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group, and co-directing the 2017 World Development Report.The article was published on Zhou’s personal WeChat blog on 17 March 2026.Zhou has kindly authorised, reviewed, and revised the translation.从“守门人”到“转账员”：世界银行在战后重建中的角色转变From “gatekeeper” to “handler of funds”: the World Bank’s shifting role in post-war reconstructionRecently, World Bank President Ajay Banga accepted an inv…