Country Profiles
Italy
Context
The Italian international cooperation system is regulated by Law 125/2014, which aims to structure Italian cooperation activities. It establishes that Italy’s strategic priorities for development cooperation are spelled out in the ‘Three-Year Planning and Policy Document for Development Cooperation Policy,’ submitted to the opinion of the Parliament, the approval of the Council of Ministers every three years.
The 2021-2023 Plan gives priority to initiatives aimed at, among others, promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, combating all forms of gender-based violence, ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH), and strengthening health systems. Gender equality is mentioned as a cross-cutting theme. Global health is one of the key priorities, as evidenced by significant contributions to GAVI and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM). 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 intends to guarantee continuity and stability of action.
The decree law establishing the “Italy-Africa Strategic Plan: Mattei Plan”, hereinafter referred to as ‘Mattei Plan’, announced in 2023, was converted into law in January 2024. It is a programmatic-strategic document aimed at promoting development in African states – and even though not all are considered priority countries for Italian cooperation, which is somewhat an indication of fragmentation. The Plan intends to counter religious radicalism, promote social stabilization, contain migration flows, and support economic development by investing in strategic sectors, such as energy, vocational training, water, infrastructures, and health. There are several priorities under the latter, namely strengthening health systems by improving primary health care services and the fight against infectious and non-communicable diseases, the improvement of local health professional skills, the promotion of the One Health approach and Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (PPPR), and the development of telemedicine tools. It involves a significant role for the private sector and a very limited one for civil society. The top-down approach of the Plan has been criticized by Italian civil society and some governments of African countries.
The Mattei Plan will be implemented by a committee headed by the President of the Council of Ministers, with the involvement of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
At the time of writing, the Italian G7 presidency was coming to an end, with no financial commitment made to international cooperation. Nevertheless, there was a commitment to continue supporting “innovative mechanisms such as the MCM Surge Financing Initiative and the International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm), and the Gavi Day Zero Financing Facility (DZF), including its First Response Fund (FRF)”, among others.
Policies & funding
Preliminary data for 2023 shows that Italy spent 5.7 billion Euros in ODA (gross disbursement), representing 0.27% of the country’s GNI and placing it in the 8th place of the ODA largest bilateral donor countries.
Italy’s ODA/GNI ratio decreased from 0.33% in 2022 to 0.27% in 2023. Notwithstanding the commitment taken in the ‘2018 Update to the Economic and Financial Document’ to gradually increase Italy’s ODA to GNI ratio to 0.36% in 2020, 0.4% in 2021, and 0.7% by 2030, in 2023 Italian ODA decreased by nearly 17%, following an increase in the previous years due to COVID-19 response and rising in-donor refugee costs. This trend is worrying as the Mattei Plan will be inevitably funded by 5.5 billion Euros (6 billion USD) for four years, in credits, grants, and guarantees of which 3 billion Euros from the Climate Fund and 2.5 billion Euros from Development Cooperation. In both cases, these are resources already previously earmarked, and not increased by the last budget law in the case of ODA.
The decrease in ODA in 2023 implies reductions for ODA sectors in which Italy has always demonstrated its commitment, such as “Cost for Emergency Response”, amounting to 4,5% of ODA in 2023 (compared to 6,2% in 2022), and “Facilitation of orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility”, amounting to 1% of ODA (compared to 2% of 2022). This is a worrying decrease because especially disbursements on the bilateral channel fell significantly by almost EUR 900 million, whereas spending on “In-donor refugee costs”, which is considered a form of ‘inflated aid’, increased further on this channel (from 21,3% in 2022 to approximately 27% in 2023) Multilateral aid also decreased, although not as drastically.
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 decrease of ODA in these sectors in 2023, going from 36.4 to 18 million Euros for SRH/FP, corresponding to 0.3% of the total ODA (while in 2022 it was of 0.5%), and from 72 to 58 million Euros for SRHR, corresponding to 1% of the total ODA.
Only core multilateral funding for SRH/FP and SRHR and organisations & initiatives for SRH/FP and SRHR remained almost unchanged, while the earmarked multilateral funding was significantly reduced. In fact, many specific funds, such as the UNFPA Humanitarian Action Thematic Fund (HTF), the Humanitarian Protection and Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Assistance for Women and Girls in Afghanistan, and other UNFPA programmes for specific countries, such as Libya and Ethiopia, that were supported in 2022, were not financed in 2023. Government-to-government funding was also reduced.