welcome to "amanpour on pbs." we're looking back at our favorite interviews this year. tonight, billionaire fi philanthropists bill and melinda gates, why they're optimistic about our state of the world. plus he called for the referendum that took britain out of the eu. now he's looking at one of the greatest challenges of our times, fragile state. my interview with british prime minister david cameron. good evening, everyone, welcome to the program. i'm christiane amanpour in london.

forget all the gloomy headlines. this is the greatest time to be alive so say bill and melinda gates in their foundation's annual letter looking at the big picture, they see a world that's getting better and healthier. they might be hard to digest especially at scandal rocks even the fill lphilanthropic world. the british charity, oxfam, struggli struggling with the fallout after admitting now fired workers operated a brothel after the 2010 haiti earthquake. bill and melinda are calling for total transparency in tear field. it they also spoke out about the responsibility of today's tech giants and persuading the skeptical trump administration that development and aid also help america first. bill and melinda gates, welcome to the program. >> thanks for having us. >> i want to hold up this letter. i don't know if everybody can see it.

it is a hefty response to some of the questions you get from the public. you do start by saying that you are explaining what you do but also how you stay optimistic given what you see, even in the worst and most difficult of times. if i can ask you just to say what good is happening out there? >> well, we're seeing the deaths of children all over the world come down, you know, 10 million deaths of children in the 2000s and now we're down to 5 million of the world. i think that's something people don't understand that the world is getting better for kids. they're surviving. if you go to places like we travel, india and africa, the kids are starting to thrive which makes a huge difference. >> bill, i assume that you and melinda and there are quill philanthropic endeavor must have been shaken when you see what's happened in the oxfam orbit over the last several days. . what do you think of those dangers, the idea of

transparency and accountability, is it sector wide or just specific to this one organization? >> i think oxfam and other ngos are out there doing phenomenal work. they have to be very careful about who they send out there and if they ever have any violations, they have to act immediately and be very tough on it. but the overall work of ca c.a.r.e., save the children, oxfam, the people who go out on the front lines are really heroes so it's great in this case that they've seen something's wrong and they're moving aggressively to stop it. >> melinda, do you think they've moved quickly enough? you could have people who just disapprove of foreign aid budgets and the like saying, see, why, we shouldn't be doing it. >> whether oxfam started early enough i can't really answer. i don't know which facts they knew when. i will say this, it's important to clean it up because we all have to believe in these institutions that are doing this very important work on the front lines. >> i want to address something,

bill, that you wrote in this letter. you both have written quite a lot, but, you know, you've written, "as much as we try to encourage feedback, we know that some of our critics don't speak up because they don't want to risk losing money. that means we need to hire well, consult experts, learn constantly and seek out different viewpoints." well, explain. >> a lot of fields like say getting an hiv vaccine, we're funding lots and lots of different approaches, and if somebody thinks we're missing something there or one of the approaches has no merit at all, maybe they're not going to speak up as much. we have to create a lot of forms where people are open. we have to bring in many different voices. all we care about is getting that vaccine as quickly as we can and saving, in that case, millions of lives. so, you know, the smart people, we need all their good thinking.

>> yeah, part of the reason for these ten questions that we put them out there, because they're tough questions, things we heard over time. it pressure tests for us our work. it makes us better. so to be transparent in our work and also pressure test our optimi optimism. >> you talk about wanting to save more and more kids. one of the questions you say you're asked a lot, which can sound quite cynical and kind of cruel and cold is what's the point of saving all these children, doesn't that just lead to overpopulation? i mean, that's a pretty difficult question, and a point to take on. how do you answer that? >> well, the key point is the best way of savie ining lives a reducing population growth is to get these vaccines out and help these young children. there are no countries where you have good health and high population growth. when parents see that their first two or three children are going to survive, then as a whole, they choose to have less children.

so we were confused about this because unless you understand that change in thinking of parents, seems like common sense that if you save millions of kids, you're going to have more kids who will have more kids. but, in fact, that is completely wrong and it's what allowed us to feel so good about this amazing health work we get to do. >> what would you say is one of the toughest or most, you know, prescient kind of questions that you got? you've got these things that you list under your answers. which are the ones that surprised you most? >> there were more questions this year about us working with this current administration than we've ever had before. cle, what's being said, we got far more of those questions this year. i think the other thing that surprised both of us was how many people ask me about our working relationship, but don't ask bill that question.

and so we wrote about that in the annual letter, too, just in case it's helpful to people. >> you know what, i was going to get to that toward the end, but you bring it up. also in this gender parity climate we live to in the me too climate, the whole idea of women being able to be perceived and valued as highly as men in the workplace. so, melinda, tell us, bill, also, what it meant to you to work together. how do you divide and conquer the labor and how long did it take you, melinda, to sort of, quote/unquote, be taken as an equal to bill? >> it's an expressed goal of ours, first of all, we are equal partners of the foundation. it's an expressed goal of ours to make sure that people know and see that. as i write in the annual letter, it took a lot of time, quite honestly. when bill retired from microsoft, almost ten years ago, and we were doing more visits together with presidents and prime ministers, you know, they would often turn to him first in the meeting and that's kind of natural in a certain way, but we

had to just create some space and some time and let a little time go by then as soon as i would speak up, people would realize, oh my gosh, she's an equal partner here in this work. but we would have these funny conversations at home like wasn't that a little bit strange? when we just make sure that we got over that. and now i think we are seen as equal partners. that's important because we're role modeling that for other couples, other businesses and honestly, for our own kids, too, because we want this generation to grow up knowing that men and women are equal. they just are. >> bill, how weird was it for you? because, i mean, you are the -- you were the ceo, you're the, you know, master of the universe. what was it like, actually, kind of realizing that your wife was an equal partner? >> well, i've always benefited from having somebody who cared about what i was working on and could advise me, you know, at microsoft, that was paul allen in the early days, palmer. it's the best with melinda because she knows me so well

that if i'm overenergetic about something or pushing a group too hard, you know, missing out on something that she sees, you know, partners help each other do a better job. we do specialize a bit. some topics i dive into. some of the science topics more. we have different proclivities but have a common goal and benefit from each other's perfective. >> i guess you could have described microsoft as tech, internet 1.0. now you've got the 22 2.0. major, major platforms. seems like they're having their day in the doghouse rather than their day in the sun. for both of you, how do you think they need to restore their reputation? i mean, we're hearing, obviously you know what's been going on with the interference in the elections, the use of social media as nefarious platforms. what advice do you have for your

successors? >> those are complicated issues. the tech platforms are now a type of media. and the media business has always had to think about how it balances viewpoints and represents the whole spectrum. these companies deserve to be part of the public dialogue that policies on what they allow to go across their platform, how they deal with privacy. with their monumental success and profitability comes a responsibility to work with governments all over the world. >> back to the very important situation of how you deal with governments, particularly your own and the administration. you talked in your letter about dealing with all the administrations and been in talks with president trump and his people, too. how has this administration in your area of fiphilanthropy and foreign aid and development stack up? what do you say to them, what do they say to you? >> we create peace and security with that foreign aid budget so

we're always advocating for that. this particular administration has been more difficult in that arena. they made proposed cuts, substantial cuts in foreign aid. luckily, congress held up those budgets so, but we are constantly making that case for foreign aid and why it's so critically, critically important for the world. >> bill, you know, president trump has talked about america first. how does american first jive with foreign aid budgets and development? is one at the expense of the other? >> i feel very strongly that even if you just look at the benefits to americans, that if you keep the world stable so that you send our soldiers overseas less often, if you keep the rest of the world healthy so pandemics aren't coming to our shores and making americans sick. if you keep those countries stable so that economically they're buying our products and participating in the world economy, that has huge benefits

to america. our participation in the international system has been a great thing for america. and so the discussion is if you interpret america first as, hey, we don't want to export anymore, we don't want to be in the u.n., you know, a very extreme view of that, it would hurt americans and so that discussion is taking place, you know, and we can justify, i believe, the modest portion of the budget that goes toward these goals. >> bill and melinda gates. thank you so much for joining us today. >> thank you. >> thanks, christiane. turning now to one of the greatest challenges facing the world today. that is fragile state. my next guest, former british prime minister david cameron, has been focusing a lot of his time on this issue since his own political career was brought to a dramatic end after the brexit vote in 20 16 when the uk voted

to leave the eu. he called that referendum. he's become a new chairman on a new commission which is unveiling quite controversial remedies in washington tomorrow. he recently testified before the senate foreign relations committee about changing the whole premise of aid to fragile nation. i sat down with cameron earlier this week before he took off for washington and we talked all about this as well as about those strikes in syria and how brexit will define his legacy. prime minister cameron, welcome. >> great to be here. >> can you just define for us fragility? what is it for the purpose of your report? >> a fra fragile state is one that's racked by conflict, affected by corruption. one that is not really capable of delivering the basic services like health and education that its people need. it's often got a very divided society and as well as obviou y ly leaving people trapped in

poverty for generation after generation. these fragile states have a huge effect on the rest of the world. they can be a source of problems mass migration, camps, it's a real problem in our world and one that in many ways is getting worse and that's what this report that i've been sharing for the last year have been looking at. >> there are several, some might call controversial points. you're not arguing to give aid, throw good money after bad, nor are you arguing just to make a transactional relationship with countries. for instance, one of the points you say is about elections and it's not necessarily the greatest thing to immediately have democratic elections after a civil war. tell us why not because that would sound -- >> first of all, on the aid point, i'm an enormous supporter of aid. as prime minister of britain was the first g7 country to achieve our gross national income going in aid. that was a promise we made to the poorest people in the world,

poorest countries in the the world. i'm proud we kept that promise. paid for vaccinating millions of children against diseases we couldn't dream of our own child dying of. educated children. helped to rebuild countries. made our world safer. lifted millions of people out of poverty. i'm not saying we should stop giving aid to fragile states. our report is saying we have to do it in a different way. one of the things we do first with these very fragile countries is we completely overload well in priorities and need to strip that back and say, actually, the most important things are basic security and basic economics. can i -- am i safe in my bed at night and can i put a meal on the table for my family in the morning? now what we're saying about elections is controversial. we're saying we're in favor of elections, we're in favor of democracy, but don't rush to the multiparty elections in some these very fragile, very conflict-affected states. what you need to do is make sure there is genuine peace, genuine security, make sure there's

proper arrangements for power sharing. if you go straight to the election, you may find you get one person, one vote, but it might be one person, one vote once, and one of the parties to the conflict wins the election and then really overrides the system and you don't get the genuine democracy. one of the points in our report is the building blocks of democracy. the rule of law, checks and balances, making sure no one becomes overpowerful. some of those basic freedoms. those building blocks are actually in many cases more important than the actual act of holding election. but we're not anti-elections. we just say let's try and sort out the internal dynamics of these countries first. >> i mean, just to sum it up, perhaps because as you say, after a civil war, the powerful are left standing. the militias, the war lords and this and that. if they get power immediately in a democratic election, it's not quite the free and fair -- >> that's right, you may end up, arguably this happened in iraq with a shia-dominated

government. what you want to do with these countries, it's more difficult to do it, have proper power sharing. are you going it have an iraq that will work for sunnis, kurds, and christians? a rwanda that looks after both? there are ways of power sharing that are working so sometimes it might be better, our report finds, to have provisional government that can fix some of these things first, make sure you put those building blocks for democracy in place and go to the multiparty elections. >> you said, just to follow up on, we're not going to come in with a whole list of priorities . i mean, one of the problems is the west comes in says we want this, we want this, we want to make you in our image. what do you want? you can't just give them the aid. i mean, they must at least be

able to govern and stamp out corruption. >> i think the first thing, first, you have to be realistic. sometimes we look at a country like somalia, deeply broken and conflict affected. problems with terrorism, migration, all the rest of it. the international community says, right, we have this great plan to turn you into denmark. modded eel of democracy in a sh period of time. strip back the priorities but most important of all make sure thooir they're t they're the country's priori priorities. they only become infragile when the people in the country look to the governments and institutions and say, yes, they're mine. i'm prepared to take orders from them, prepared to obey them, prepared to work with this country. so it's very important that the priorities set are set by the countries and the governments, themselves. sometimes in the past, we've always undermined the governments and the institutions of these countries, all out of good intentions.

we need to change the way we do things. that's why this report is quite radical, saying instead of telling you here's the money, here's the policies you must pursue, we're saying no, no, let's scrap that. it's your plan, your priorities. we will help you. we will fund it. but, and a big but, government condition conditionality. if you waste the money, if you steal the money, if you can't show how the money has been spent, not proper audit, proper governance, we won't give you anything. that's a very big change and very important change that our report suggests. >> you mentioned the report actually has quite some startling figures. >> the big figure is the -- the world has agreed to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. those were the millennium development goals. played a role in helping to put those together. but of course, we won't meet those goals unless we deal with the fragile states. because some of these countries, democratic republic of congo, liberia, some of these countries

are actually poorer than they were 40 or 50 years ago, so there's no prospect of tackling extreme poverty unless we tackle state fragility and the truth about our world today is actually india and china with growth and development are lifting their own poor out of poverty. and by 2030, we'll find half of the world's poor will be in thesestates. they'll be in the drcs, the somalias, south sudan, yemens, countries which are badly fractured. what we're arguing for is very difficult. it's much easier to vaccinate a child or to build a school. that's not easy but it's relatively straightforward compared with building honest tax authorities and honest governments and tackling corruption. it doesn't mean we shouldn't try. >> right. the obvious question is are all these questions which are feeling besieged today whether by immigration or refugees or any number of populist politics. the economy. are they going to do it?

are they going to have the will? >> if we say to them we are going to stop piling up priorities onto you, stop telling you what to do and how do to it, we want you to come up with a plan to bring your nation together, bring disputed parties together, develop your country and we will back you. that's a far better prospect of long-term success and they're surprised not just to governments, but also the imf, big institutions. sometimes they treat fajragile states the same as they treat other countries. the imf, it's pointless saying to the poorest country in the world you got to have the same sort of program of the k biggest countries in the world. get rid of deficits and dealing with debt, but when you're dealing with a totally broken country, you have to start with are there roads to get your goods to market? are there ports? do you have electricity and energy for your people to be age to start and run businesses?

you got goto get some of the basics in place. >> talking about broken countries, syria is obviously very, very broken. you were prime minister famously in 20 13 is when a similar situation came up. using chemical weapons and should the world respond or not. you wanted to. you took it to parliament and they said no to you. how much of a mistake was that? do you agree with the british prime minister did this time not talk ta taking it to parliament? >> i back what theresa may and emmanuel macron and what president trump have done. the use of chemical weapons is absolutely abhorrent. we cannot allow it to become normalized in our world. it's sort of part of the battlefield picture and i think what they've done is right. i deeply regret that parliament didn't vote for similar action in 2013. i think i know why. a lot of people were so unhappy about what happened in iraq and they were so bruised by that. i remember talking to mp after

mp who said i quite support what you're proposing with respect to syria but so bruised by the experience with iraq i can't vote for it. that was a huge problem. i think soohe's done the right thing. this is not about regime change the civil war.ntervening in acceptable.emical weapons is po >> i want to ask you about brexit. let me quote. peter mand lson said history will remember david cameron as the prime minister who took us out of the eu. a man who took this tactical risk which then turned into a strategic blunder. you, yourself, report on an open mike in davo skrs saying this w mistake, brexit, not a disaster, it turned out less badly than orange iniiginally thought. i want to ask you personally what dough feel about your political obituary, if you like, being this, this being the first line of it. >> obviously, people will make

the judgment about my 11 years leading the conservative party and 6 years leading the country. i hope people will look at the fact that i became prime minister, we had one of the biggest budget deficits in the world and reduced that radically. we created over 2 million jobs. a million new businesses. we became the fastest growing country in the g7. there was an economic record and some other things i'm very proud of, actually being the first g7 country to keep its promise to the poorest countries and poorest people in the world i think is something to be proud of. obviously, brexit is a huge event in our country's history. i don't regret holding a referendum, i think it was a right thing to do. i don't think you can belong to these organizations and see their powers grow and treat the treaty after treaty and power after power going from westminster to brussels and not ask the people if they're happy governeded in that way. i wish the vote had gone another way. i think we've taken the wrong course.

to be frank, it is a limegitima choice to be a friend and neighbor and partner of the european union rather than a member of the european union. that's what the country has chosen. i accept the result. my wish my successor well in the work that she's done. i know being prime minister, it is a hard enough job without your predecessor giving you a running commentary. that's why i haven't been giving interviews and all the rest. >> all the things you said to me about the successes you've done, the changes and the transformations. are you worried this will be what people remember you for? >> i think people will make up their own minds. i obviously believe that i was right to hold a referendum. i made a promise to the british people. i kept that promise. the point i would make is that, you know, people say this is all about politics. and of course, there's always politics involved in these decisions, but there was also, i believe, a fundamental problem that britain had and britain was

seeing with the development of the single currency, beginning of decisions being made about us without us and we needed to fix our position. i wanted to fix it inside the european union. the british public chose that we would fix it from outside the european union. and i wish my successor well with her work in being what i hope will be a good and friendly and close neighbor to the european union rather than as we were, perhaps we were a slightly reluctant and sometimes unhappy tenant. >> david cameron, thank you very much. we hope to continue that conversation when you've written your book. >> thank you. i'll get on with it. >> thank you very much. >> we hope you enjoyed dipping into our archive with us. that's it for our special edition. thanks for watching "amanpour on pbs" and join us again tomorrow night.

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