The definition of non governmental organisations, ONG in Italian, is regulated by the law 49/87, which identifies those organisations that, after a preliminary investigation, obtain a recognition of their status from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the possibility to manage cooperative projects. Currently, there are 239 organisations with an ONG status, most of them have their headquarter in Northern Italy 47.3% and 40.2% in the Centre and only 12.6% in the South of the country.
About 27,000 people are involved in non-governmental organisations: 12,500 volunteers, 11,500 paid staff (on average 48 for each organisations), 1,500 co-workers and 1,500 civil servants, that is what the research “the first report on social economy” carried out by the National Council of Economics and Labour (CNEL) and ISTAT in 2008 reveals. Their source of income? NGOs have raised from private sector for its international social projects about 400 billion euros in 2007
Aid to development
Since 2006, Italian official aid to development amounted to three million Euros, about 0.2% of the National GDP. Italy has not yet achieved the EU objective of allocating 0.33% of its national GDP by 2007 as points out Action Aid in its report “Italy and the fight against world poverty 2008” on the Italian development cooperation in 2008.
According to the European agreement, “European Consensus on Development” approved by the General Affairs Council of the EU in 2005, by 2015 each EU countries have to allocate 0.7% of their national GDP. The European goals to allocate 0.5% to ODA by 2010 seems far away for Italy, that needs to re-align to the EU standards to reach a “common vision” of development cooperation among the EU member states.
