DEVELOPMENT: Italy Takes Aim at Global Poverty

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jorge Piña

ROME, Jul 25 2000 (IPS) - The Italian government approved three foreign aid initiatives Monday, indicating the formal start of its plan to fight poverty in the world, and placing this European country “among the donors most determined to achieve the targets set by the Copenhagen summit,” according to the foreign ministry.

The projects were approved in line with the commitment by industrialised countries to cut global poverty in half by 2015, adopted by the Jun 26-30 special session of the United Nations general assembly in Geneva.

Another of the resolutions adopted by the special session of the general assembly, called to assess progress made towards the targets agreed at the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, was for industrialised nations to earmark 0.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to development aid.

Average Official Development Aid (ODA) among donors stood at 0.24 percent of GDP in 1999, just up from 0.23 percent in 1998. In comparison, Italy assigned 0.2 percent of GDP to development aid last year.

The development aid office of Italy’s foreign ministry approved 7.5 million dollars Monday in assistance for the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) university programme.

It allotted an additional 15 million dollars for a special fund against poverty set up by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The third initiative approved Monday involved five million dollars in financing for a fund set up by the World Bank’s action plan against poverty and for urban sanitation. Italy’s contribution will go towards technical and social assistance provided by an ambitious programme to slash urban poverty in Salvador, the capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia.

Italy also approved a sum of 86 million dollars, 60 million of which are to go towards financing 500 kms of coastal highway in Morocco running across the North African country from Tangiers to the Algerian border.

In addition, the executive committee of the foreign aid office agreed to grant 12 million dollars worth of university and post- graduate scholarships to developing countries in the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 school years.

So far this year, the development aid office has approved 500 million dollars in ODA, an amount similar to the 1999 total, which “confirms the renewed vitality” of Italy’s aid policy, according to a foreign ministry spokesman.

The executive committee on development aid, presided over by under-secretary of foreign relations Rino Serri, assessed the progress made by aid projects, particularly initiatives by non- governmental organisations (NGOs), which were the key focus of the meeting.

Italy’s development aid policy is interested in clearly demonstrating that it sets top priority on “the world of volunteers,” stated a communique released Monday.

The development aid office agreed to assign another 19 million dollars to projects run by NGOs, bringing to 33.5 million dollars the aid earmarked for civil society development aid initiatives this year.

The Italian government will soon reach this year’s target of 40 million dollars in aid to NGOs, added the report.

The committee also approved four million dollars for NGO projects involving education and information on development.

Italy believes ODA has a crucial role to play in terms of helping the world reach its development targets, by supporting the efforts of emerging nations to eliminate poverty.