Country Profiles
Italy
Context
The Italian international cooperation system is regulated by Law 125/2014 which aims at modernizing Italian cooperation activities.
Law 125/2014 establishes that Italy’s strategic priorities for development cooperation are spelled out in the ‘Three-Year Planning and Policy Document for Development Cooperation Policy’, which is submitted to the opinion of the Parliament, the approval of the Council of Minister every three years.
The 2021-2023 Plan gives priority to initiatives aimed at, among the others, promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, combating all forms of violence, and ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH), strengthening health systems. Gender equality is mentioned as a cross-cutting theme. Global health has remained one of the key priorities, translated by significant contributions to GAVI and to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and to the recently established Pandemic Fund by the G20 under the Italian Presidency. At the geographic level, priority is given to 20 countries – 11 in Africa, 1 in Balkan Europe, 4 in the Middle East, 2 in Asia, and 2 in Latin America -, with which Italy has built close political, economic, cultural and development cooperation relations over time, and in which the country intends to guarantee continuity and stability of action.
In 2023, the government announced a new Partnership Plan for international cooperation, called Piano Mattei that will focus on the African continent, intending to counter Islamist radicalism, promote social stabilization, and support economic development by investing in strategic sectors, such as energy. With Piano Mattei the Executive aims to make Italy an energy hub for Europe and to contain migratory flows. At the time of writing, the Plan is being discussed in the cabinet, and it will be implemented by a committee headed by the President of the Council of Ministers, with the involvement of AICS (Italian Agency for Development Cooperation) and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. It remains to be seen if this Partnership will impact SRHR in any way.
Policies & funding
Preliminary data for 2022 shows that Italy spent 6.4 billion Euros in ODA (gross disbursement), representing 0.32% of GNI and putting it in the 8th place of the ODA countries. It marks an increase of 16% from 2021. However, the increase was due to in-donor refugee costs; excluding the costs, Italy’s ODA dropped by 2% compared to the previous year. In fact, the refugee costs rose from 470 million Euros to 1.4 billion Euros (mainly refugees from the conflict in Ukraine).
Italy is thus not in line with its domestic, EU and international, commitments to collectively achieve the 0.7% ODA/GNI ratio by 2030.
2022 was characterized by various emergencies that absorbed almost 7% of total ODA, of which 4,8% were allocated to address the war in Ukraine. Almost 2% of ODA correspond to “Facilitation of orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility” and 21% correspond to the Cost for Refugees in donor countries, effectively inflating ODA flows.
In the last two years, Italy increased its bilateral aid, keeping it at similar levels as multilateral channels. However, this figure was artificially influenced by the increase of in-donor refugee costs. If these costs are excluded, the multilateral system is still the preferred channel for Italian cooperation and absorbs over 3.1 billion Euros compared to 1.7 billion Euros for bilateral assistance. Contrary to the situation in other European countries, in Italy the main entity disbursing ODA is not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but rather the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
With regards to sexual and reproductive health and family planning (SRH/FP), and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), it is important to stress the increase of ODA in 2022 for these sectors, from 19 to 36 million Euros for SRH/FP, corresponding to 0,6% of the total ODA (while in 2021 was of 0,3%), and from 50 to 72 million Euros for SRHR, corresponding to 1,1% of the total ODA.
Only core multilateral funding for SRH/FP and for SRHR remained almost unchanged, and government-to-government was reduced by 9%, while support through the other streams increased: earmarked multilateral funding tripled, while funding to specific SRH/FP organisations & initiatives increased by 85% for SRH/FP and 38% for SRHR. Most of these resources were channeled through the multilateral system, which represented 79% of Italy’s support to the agenda.
These contributions are part of Italian Health ODA, under which the country also supports other platforms such as the Pandemic Fund which was funded for the first time in 2022 placing Italy as the fourth highest contributor, after the EU, USA, Germany and before Japan, France, and other donors.
Key documents
- Country factsheet 2022-2023-Italy.pdf
- ‘Three-year cooperation programming and policy orientation plan 2021 – 2023’
- Guidelines on Gender equality and empowerment of women and girls (2020 – 2024)
- L’AICS e l’uguaglianza di genere. Relazione sulle attività 2021 (Italian agency for International Development. Activity report 2021)
- Il Sistema italiano di cooperazione allo sviluppo (Camera dei Deputati)