Reviw of Italian development cooperation by the DAC

Yesterday, the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD presented in Rome the results of the Italian Peer review . The DAC document noted that Italian Co-operation is facing major challenges. The first is an urgent need to reform official development co-operation, but no political consensus on how to proceed. The second is that Italy will fail to meet its international commitment to increase official development assistance (ODA) to 0.51% of its gross national income (GNI) by 2010 and is unlikely to meet 0.7% by 2015. In 2008 Italy’s ODA/GNI ratio was 0.22%, only 19th amongst the 23 DAC members and 8th in terms of aid volume.

The DAC called upon Italy to demonstrate the strong political leadership needed to reform and fund a reliable and results oriented aid programme.

Despite the challenges remaining, the DAC notes some improvement in Italian aid management since 2008. It welcomes Italy’s intention to focus on 35 priority countries, the greater authority given to Italy’s embassies and technical offices to deliver and to contribute to formulating programmes and deliver aid, and the Steering Committee on Development Co-operation’s high level policy direction.

Italy still needs a strategy for its development co-operation shared by all stakeholders and to ensure that development assistance committee; italian co-operation; DAC; official development assistanceall relevant government departments and regional and local authorities work to common objectives; build systems to promote coherence between development co-operation and other policies; reform human resource management for the core cadre of development experts; and regularly undertake monitoring and independent evaluation. In addition, the limited political debate and public awareness about Italian Co-operation show there is an urgent need for the Italian authorities, together with civil society, to build popular support for development and public pressure for reforming Italian Co-operation.

Out of the 19 reccomandation the DAC Chair pointed out to 4 major priorities for Italian aid : approval of a new legislation for development cooperation; a strategic vision; swif progresses on Policy coherence for developemnt and develop apublic opinion communication strategy.