The joint statement denounces the World Bank’s role in advancing an unlawful and externally imposed “reconstruction” framework for Gaza, amid Israel’s ongoing genocide, illegal occupation, siege, blockade, and system of apartheid in Palestine.

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By joining the founding executive board of the Board of Peace and serving as a limited Trustee for the Board of Peace-associated Gaza Reconstruction and Development Financial Intermediary Fund, the World Bank risks enabling impunity for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, while entrenching colonial governance structures that deny Palestinians their inalienable right to self-determination, redress, and reparations.

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The statement warns that the Board of Peace does not offer justice, accountability, or Palestinian-led recovery. Instead, it risks turning Gaza into a site of militarised control, corporate extraction, and geopolitical bargaining; treating Palestinian land as an investment frontier while sidelining the very people whose lives, communities, histories, and futures are at stake.

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For Manushya Foundation, signing this statement is an act of decolonial, Global South solidarity. Reconstruction cannot be used as a cover for dispossession. Development finance cannot be used to launder genocide. Peace cannot be imposed through militarisation, surveillance, and exclusion.

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Any credible reconstruction process must be Palestinian-led, rooted in international law, and grounded in justice, reparations, self-determination, and collective liberation. This includes recognising Palestinian-led frameworks such as the Phoenix Plan as the legitimate basis for any future reconstruction process.

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The joint statement calls on the World Bank Group to:

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• urgently withdraw from the Board of Peace and terminate the GRAD Financial Intermediary Fund;

• publicly reject any imposed reconstruction framework;

• recognise that rebuilding lives and livelihoods in Gaza cannot begin while genocide, occupation, siege, blockade, and apartheid continue;

• publicly promote Palestinian-led reconstruction frameworks, including the Phoenix Plan;

• condemn reprisals against Palestinian human rights defenders and their allies; and

• Cooperate with UN Special Procedures and avoid participating in structures that undermine the UN multilateral system.

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The statement also raises serious concerns that the Board of Peace excludes Palestinian representatives, sidelines Palestinian civil society, and advances a model of reconstruction that deepens impunity rather than accountability. It warns that Palestinian women, who have long sustained households, communities, care networks, food provision, education, and mutual aid under siege and displacement, must be recognised not as passive beneficiaries, but as political actors whose knowledge and leadership are essential to any just recovery.

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Manushya Foundation stands with Palestinian communities, human rights defenders, feminist movements, and Global South civil society in demanding that the World Bank stop legitimising colonial violence under the language of “peace” and “development.”

 

There can be no reconstruction without self-determination.
No development without justice.
No peace without liberation.