“Rome Trial”, a security operation

The International Conference on Development and Migration, hosted by the Italian government, seems to have activated one of the components of the “Matte Plan” that the Prime Minister has raised several times so far but still lacks concrete content. The so-called “Rome Process”, in fact, as a result of the call to the conference, approved a new approach to the problem of migration from the African continent through an enhanced form of cooperation between the police forces.

Signal It is very clear, and can be summed up in a further departure from the national frontiers, which will now have to place the control of migrations not only at the level of the coasts of North Africa, but also of the south. Here, then, it has been rewritten by right-wing security sensitivities, the basis of development cooperation no longer being predominantly centered on the axis of human rights, health, education, combating poverty and climate change, in short in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and not by chance that it is not actually mentioned during the conference, because it is oriented towards managing the effects that ignore all that follows, namely migration. Cooperating with countries whose democratic stability is at least questionable, such as Tunisia or Libya at present, not to mention the diverse composition of sub-Saharan countries, by activating the sending of money that, again, according to the Prime Minister, should be spent by local partners as they see fit, does not seem in fact a good way forward for this plan of support for the development of democratic processes in the African continent that may need support for rights in the first place.

about this The conference recorded the irony of the Tunisian president who starkly wondered who got all the weapons the West was sending to his continent, an almost lesson in geopolitics that echoed the specter of that colonial past from which the current Italian government seems, mutatis mutandis, to draw inspiration. In this regard, President Said, a professor of constitutional law who suspended the work of the constitution approved by his people, wanted to recall that the current migration movements from south to north are nothing more than the repercussions of the colonial period, in addition to claiming the right to give birth to the “Roman” initiative, and thanked the Italian government for accepting his proposal.

Given these premises, it is now a matter of understanding what and how many funds will be provided for the new security cooperation for development, who will manage it and what will be the criteria for selecting partners as well as indicators of effectiveness.

enough to hot spot Lampedusa remain empty? Doesn’t anyone seek a better future by crossing our sea? And will the money for the Sustainable Development Goals that Italy promised internationally, equal to 0.7 percent of GDP, be finally disbursed today at less than 3 percent, as requested by Campagna070? And again, what is the role of NGOs that have always worked with African people on the idea of ​​equal dignity and mutual listening? Will they be heard or will they continue to be seen as part of the problem rather than the solution?

As we can see, the questions that this conference leaves open are key to understanding where we really want to go. So vigilance because these are issues that concern us all: if you write cooperation you are reading democracy.