By Caroline Nursey, Executive Director

Here at the BBC World Service Trust, we welcome DFID’s new White Paper, Eliminating World Poverty, Building our Common Future.

There is a clear evidence and research base demonstrating that media in developing countries can constitute among the most effective checks on corruption and abuse of power, and it is gratifying to see this reflected in the White Paper. The commitment to set aside an amount equivalent to 5% of budget support funds to help ‘ensure that citizens groups, local media… and others are able to monitor how governments use these resources’ is a critical and necessary step if in-country accountability mechanisms are to be successful. A fresh approach to accountability lay at the heart of the Accra Agenda for Action aimed at enhancing aid effectiveness, and agreed almost a year ago. It is refreshing to see the principles outlined there transformed here into clear and practical commitments.

More fundamentally, however, we strongly welcome the intensified focus on working within a clear and thorough analysis of political and power realities within fragile states. The BBC World Service Trust supports media in developing countries not as an end in itself but to enable more accountable and effective governance, to bring about more informed citizenries and to facilitate public debate.

In fragile states, which are often fractured states, we particularly work to enable communication and dialogue across ethnic, political, religious or other fracture points in society, work that we believe can contribute to the formation of more stable states with stronger national identities. We are grateful to the existing support from DFID’s Governance and Transparency Fund enabling us to perform this role in several African countries.

We are well aware too that media can sometimes fracture rather than foster democratic governance, as it can be co-opted by narrow political and sometimes extreme forces in society to foster division and contribute to state fragility. When this happens, as the White Paper highlights, media can become an element in ‘what makes states fragile and fuels violence’. Another significant part of the work of the BBC World Service Trust focuses on supporting media capacities and processes that can counteract such pressures, that enhances debate and provides legitimate platforms for marginalised communities to make their voices heard.

The BBC World Service Trust, a charity established by but independent of the BBC, is the largest media support organisation in the world, spending more than £20 million per year, most of it in fragile states, more than half focused on improving governance, and most of that working with local media to enhance government accountability and improve state-citizen and citizen-citizen relationships.

With a global staff of more than 500, and a research team of more than 50 people, most of them drawn from and working within fragile states, we believe we represent an important resource in translating the aims and measures set out in the White Paper into practical action on the ground.

We also welcome the additional support announced to civil society organisations and the decision to develop ‘new partnership agreements to organisations based in developing countries and working on new issues’. We strongly believe that the role of media and communication in the democratic development process is a critical emerging issue, one that is poorly supported and structured across the development landscape and we look forward to taking forward discussions on such partnership agreements in due course.

Caroline Nursey
Executive Director