DEVELOPMENT: ‘Days of Italian Cooperation’ Are Here

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Elisa Marincola

FLORENCE, Oct 28 2005 (IPS) - The ‘days of Italian cooperation’ are here, or they should be, going by an international conference on reaching the Millennium Development Goals.

The conference on ‘Reaching the MDGs 2005-1015’ is being promoted by the development cooperation directorate of the Italian ministry of foreign affairs. The conference is being held as a part of the annual meeting of the IPS support group to explore what Italy can do with its European Union (EU) partners and Japan to meet the millennium goals.

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) cope with a variety of issues such as the promotion of education, maternity health care, gender equality, poverty reduction policies, child mortality, AIDS and other fatal diseases. These goals were set for the year 2015 with reference to the international situation prevalent in 1990.

The conference is being held under a larger initiative dubbed ‘days of Italian cooperation’. The initiative will seek to promote the concept of development aid to citizens “who do not even know what it means,” director-general of Italian cooperation Giuseppe Deodato told the conference.

Financial aid is vital if the international commitments are to be met, delegates agreed. Italy sets aside only 0.15 percent of its gross national income (GNI) for development aid compared to the EU average of 0.34 percent.

The Italian non-governmental organisations (NGO) network Sbilanciamoci which presents an alternative national budget every year says development aid has been cut by 100 million euro (120 million dollars) while more than a billion dollars will be spent just on maintaining Italian troops in Iraq.

The Sbilanciamoci report speaks also of the need for a central agency to coordinate policies and the management of funds.

But Alfredo Mantica, undersecretary at the foreign affairs ministry, said that since 2001 Italy has cancelled 2.7 billion euros (3.2 billion dollars) of debt to developing countries, and that by the end of 2005 its development aid will add up to 0.26 percent thanks to the debt relief to Iraq of 2.9 billion dollars.

Sergio Marelli, president of the Italian NGOs Association, said audits should be carried out on countries that do not respect commitments taken at the EU level. “The economic crisis involves also the rest of Europe, but other countries maintain their commitments,” he said..

Raffaele Salinari, spokesperson for the Group of International NGOs in Italy, said the MDGs are inconsistent with a militarising world, and that the next World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong must stress the need for stability, peace and economic development both for southern and northern countries.

While delegates were agreed on the need for more financial aid, that alone was not enough, they said. Several delegates spoke of communication as central to the development process.

Tony Trew, deputy chief executive of content and strategy development in South Africa, said there are two main challenges to confront: infrastructure for connectivity, and supporting local independent media that will generate its own content. In coverage by the northern networks, “Africa maintains a negative picture, strongly linked to emergencies and disasters.”

Christian Sundgren, deputy director of the department for international cooperation in Finland, and chair of the IPS support group, also said communication is central to development. “Without the communication component no project will ever come up,” he said.

Delegates spoke of the need for monitoring projects. “To introduce monitoring systems for the financed projects, civil society as well as national institutions in developing countries must be involved,” said Jean-Michel Debrat from the French Agency for Development. “For this reason relationships through local governments have a central role: they grant a high level of transparency and a direct contact with the local communities that will receive aid.”

Nozomu Takaoka from the Japanese Embassy in Italy said Japan would support partnership with the private sector and civil society in the south as a central way to achieve the goals.

Carlos Tibúrcio, special advisor to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, said the fight against poverty had became stronger with the involvement of the private sector and civil society.