DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN-ITALY: Aid Renewed to Developing South

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jorge Pina

ROME, Dec 12 1998 (IPS) - After falling to last place among countries of the industrialised North in terms of development aid as percentage of GDP, Italy is renewing its policy of assistance to developing countries, Assistant Secretary of Foreign Relations Rino Serri announced Monday.

The new aid policy of Italy’s centre-left government will condition assistance on recipient countries’ respect for the rights consecrated in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In the 1980s, Italy contributed around 0.40 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the developing world. But the level of aid plunged to 0.20 percent of GDP in 1996 and 0.10 percent last year, putting Italy in last place among industrialised nations – just after the United States, which earmarks 0.12 percent of GDP.

The European average is 0.43 percent, Canada provides 0.32 percent, and the global average (including Japan with 0.20 percent) stands at 0.39 percent – far short of the 0.70 percent of GDP to which industrialised nations committed themselves at the 1970 U.N. General Assembly.

Italy’s centre-left government has pledged around 300 million dollars in aid to the developing world, according to the 1999 budget bill, to be approved before year-end. To that total will be added another 450 million dollars to go toward bilateral cooperation, as well as the unspecified funds paid back by former loan-holders.

At an international conference on street children organised by the International Volunteers for Development (VIS), Serri said the initiative constituted “a significant step in cooperation.”

He stated that he was confident that after years of a close to total elimination of development aid, Italian cooperation would “enter a new phase” and “renew its work at a suitable and adequate level.”

The aid will be oriented toward “minority-linked issues” – a concept that is to determine the priorities for the contribution of funds “even in our own country,” said Serri.

Young victims of exploitative labour conditions will be the chief recipients of such aid. “This will be the key characteristic of our cooperation, to which we will link all our aid activity,” he explained.

“The struggle against all forms of discrimination, violence and exploitation, the prevention of and fight against aberrant phenomena like the sexual exploitation of children, ethnic persecution, the organ trade and the use of children as soldiers” will all be taken into account, he added.

Serri said such aspects would be studied by a national commission to be set up to coordinate policies and initiatives for cooperation with countries of the developing South. The commission will work with the Department of Social Affairs.

The conference reported that there were around 100 million “street children” worldwide – nearly 10 million of whom are found in industrialised countries.

Antonio Raimondi, the president of VIS, pointed out that the disparities between North and South were still growing. “While the richest 20 percent consumed 80 percent of all resources, they now take 84 percent.”