Interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, head of VSO

Jonathan Dimbleby is the president of the UK-based Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), an international aid agency with about 2,000 staff working in countries across the world. He is also an eminent broadcaster, whose harrowing film "The Unknown Famine", documenting Ethiopia’s 1973 food crisis, propelled him to fame. Here he tells IRIN, while on a visit to VSO Ethiopia, of his cautious optimism for the future of the country, the hurdles still needing to be overcome, and about the VSO's role in the country's development. QUESTION: What is VSO doing in Ethiopia? ANSWER: VSO is a development agency that deploys volunteers who work for no money in some 74 countries around the world. It has been running for 50 years, and we have been in Ethiopia for six years. Altogether in this country we have gone from six volunteers to 75, and we are still growing. Our focus here is on capacity building, and we are principally focused on the education sector, and we are programmatic in our approach. Why are we here? Because we work in the poorest countries in the world. Our focus is on those most deprived in those poorest countries. We only work on programmes on the invitation of governments or, as is often the case, indigenous NGOs, sometimes with private businesses as well. Ethiopia is poor, Ethiopia is developing. We think we can assist by sharing skills to capacity build in key areas, and so we negotiated that arrangement. We, in the education sector, are in the ministry, we are in the teacher training colleges, we are in the university and, at the school level, [in] primary schools in the rural areas. Over 60 of our present volunteers are doing that. We plan to be here for the long haul, because there is a lot to be done that we believe the government is seeking to achieve, because this is along the right lines, as indeed the UN and other organisations think. But we are an international development agency essentially, but we don’t do our own programmes, we match volunteers who we seek to find and work out what are the postings that are going to work. Q: What do VSO believe are the difficulties faced by Ethiopia? A: The main difficulties are pretty self-evident. In many cases, severe malnutrition and an education system that only reaches very few, although it is expanding rapidly in terms of the numbers of primary school children coming into schools. Health services that are terrifyingly inadequate. But the development of a society in which people can achieve their minimum rights under the UN Charter is what is to me and to VSO the cardinal issue here. But we can only work in an environment... that is productive for achieving those goals. One of the key difficulties is clearly that a ministry can decide that they want to do this, but lacks all sorts of resources to make it happen on the ground. We can facilitate that process, we think. If you take teachers for example, our teachers are training mainly other teachers, and they are training teacher trainers, student-centred learning for example. Q: How effective do you think VSO are in the field? A: It varies, and it depends very much on the extent to which the government or the partner organisation runs, assesses and judges and wants to work with the volunteer and vice versa. You are creating relationships here. Partnerships don’t exist unless both sides work at it. But, in the great majority [of cases] real progress is being made... We don’t just go and put a lot of volunteer fingers in a lot of dykes, we only work where we think there is a programme that we think we can assist and that programme is viable, so we do a lot of assessment before we allow volunteers to go into this or that job. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but very often it does, because I think we do a good job in that assessment of available jobs. The proof is in the pudding. One aspect of that is [that in] every single place I have been, if they haven’t got volunteers in that capacity building role, they are asking for them, and where they have got them already, they are asking for more. Our supply cannot begin to meet the demand that is coming at us at the moment for those skills... Q: What more could developed countries do to help poorer countries? A: I strongly think that the West contributes to a world that is insecure and volatile by appearing to be comfortable to live with a world and an environment in which the gap between the haves and the have-nots - locally nationally and globally - is growing, even though living standards are rising. I think the gap is extremely important and, of course, although living standards generally are rising in large parts of Africa, living standards are either standing still or failing [in other parts]. So that is my general view, and I think anyone who didn’t read into September 11th that there has to be a war on poverty [in its role] as one of the sources of terror, anyone who doesn’t see that needs their head examined. So I think there are very powerful pragmatic reasons as well as ethical reasons for looking at every aspect of the framework of relations between the developed and developing world, whether it is trade, whether it is investment, whether it is debt... I think that aid packages should rise. Aid has to be properly spent. The countries have got to have the capacity to use the aid. You have to have an environment where it can be effective, which means transparency, openness, moving towards democracy and respect for human rights – the rule of law. All of those things are very important to that process. But I think it is far more urgent than some nations, notably at the moment the United States, seem to believe. You can conduct a war on terror, but you don’t solve the causes of terror by just having a war against it with machine guns. Q: Where do you think Ethiopia can improve in those areas of transparency, openness, moving towards democracy and respect for human rights? A: Well, it's very clear [that] the democratic process is not in place here as it is in a western country. Violations of human rights here: People are still arrested on charges that seem very dramatic for the alleged offence. The press, although there is a much freer press, it is still not free. There are questions about the electoral process. However, I... am inclined to believe that this government is serious when it talks about taking the road to democracy. That they believe it is integral to delivering a developing economy that relies on, amongst other things, investment, and in that sense is crucial to the national security of this country, as well as having a standing army is crucial to the national security of this country. I look at it relatively too. It is far better - without question in my view - than it was. I was one of the few people, outsiders, who was able to see a bit of what it was like here in the days of the Dergue [now defunct socialist ruling body established in 1974] and [former dictator] Mengistu [Hailemariam]. It is no longer a frightening place to be as it was then. It is far less arbitrary in its exercise of power. It is far more open. People are much more willing to tell you what they think than they were, and that is an important measure of confidence. The abuses of human rights have diminished, [but], as I said, they are still there. It is going to take a long time... To believe that it is possible to wave a magic wand and have a near perfect democratic state here in two, three, four, five years is to be very naïve. Q: Do voluntary organizations have a place against so-called professional aid agencies? A: The cost of a volunteer in comparison with the cost of someone paid to do the same job with the same skills is absolute miniscule. I think it is around GBP 100,000. A volunteer comes in [at] about GPB 12,000. The people who are the professionals in VSO are making development assessments in exactly the same way as any other nongovernmental organisations. Indeed, they move very freely between different organisations... The talents that come out as volunteers - sometimes they have worked also in other organisations and have chosen also to work as volunteers. But they are here because, and only because, they have professional skills at various levels that this society wants... I have spent 25 years or more knowing NGOs quite well in developing countries. These are as professional in what they do as any, and very much more professional than some that I have come across. So I don’t think there is an issue of ability commitment or professional skill. Sometimes, if you are being paid quite a lot to do something and somebody else isn’t being paid, you want to feel you are delivering something that the person who is not being paid can’t deliver. I have yet to see the unpaid person failing to deliver to the same extent of those that have been paid.