On. Sandra Zampa attends the G8/20 Global Parliamentarians Summit on Girls and Population: the forgotten drivers of development.
I had been invited to participate with a contribution to the discussion at the Global Summit of parliamentarians ahead of G8/G20 2011 on the theme “Girls and Population: The Forgotten drives of development” which was held in Paris on May 16 to 17. You can find below an essay of my speech. These are just some of the elements that were later developed during the subsequent debate.
S.Z.
Girls and Population: the forgotten drives of development
Speech by On. Sandra Zampa, Member of the Democratic Party, Italy at the Global Summit of Parliamentarians ahead of 2011 G8/G20
16/17 May 2011, National Assembly, Paris, France
With the cuts decided by the Berlusconi government, the Italian international cooperation has been fundamentally jeopardized. Indeed, the budget of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs amounts to 0.4% of the entire state budget.
Moreover, Italy has not transferred its due quotas to the “Global Fund to Fight AIDS and other Epidemics” for the years 2009, 2010, 2011. In 2008 it was the Prodi government who transferred the latest quota to the Global Fund.
Regarding the development aid of Italy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can currently manage only 80 millions Euros. From 300 millions to multilateral policies in 2008, there are only 40 millions for 2011. This means that Italy is not present anymore in multilateral organizations.
With the recent restructuring of the budget for international cooperation, the amount of funds granted to the Middle East has increased of 30%, but with a significant reduction in those allocated to Asian states (15%), to Latin America and Caribbean states (13%) and to Africa (from 50% to 42%).
In this dark scenario, the closing of the Italian office of cooperation in Brussels and the consequent negative effects on the ability to define new European policies for the Mediterranean should be also underlined. To this negative state of affairs, we should add that many Italian development aid offices have been recently closed in an increasing number of countries.
The priorities are defined according to the issues discussed in the G8 and G20: food safety, health, environment and water. Issues such as gender and women empowerment are of particular importance. In this context, the international crisis determined by the revolts in northern African states such Egypt, Tunisia and Libya is changing the overall picture.
While we all hope that the current political turmoil in the Mediterranean is going to turn in a democratic outcome, strong expectations are growing in the revolting populations towards the role of Italy and Europe. This is an opportunity for our growth too.
Women have a special place in this context and a special help should be given to women. Indeed, there is an emergency within the emergency, that is female teenagers and children are a central part of the current migration. The statements collected in Lampedusa from these young women remind us about the violence and the poor conditions of the receiving country.
We need to make a special effort to convince Brussels of the need to invest significant funds in the destabilized countries for promoting growth policies targeted to women, in field such as education, welfare and the job market.
The conclusive statement at the end of the meeting
