New Actors on the Horizon: the International Outreach of Italian Civil Society

written by Donatella Cugliandro and published by "The International Spectator", Vol.44, March 2009, pp.185-197, www.iai.it

The proliferation of Italian civil society organisations (CSOs) in recent years has drawn growing attention from public institutions. Hence the establishment of the National Agency on Non-profit Organisations (Agenzia per le ONLUS) in 2000. Besides providing legal advice to non-profit organisations (NPOs) and gathering and disseminating information on their activities in Italy, this state agency intends to foster a closer relationship with its counterparts in other European countries, thus launching and contributing to several EU programmes with the aim of shaping and consolidating a “European civil society”.
The role of Italian CSOs in the European, and, more broadly, the international arena has also become the subject of lively debate. This article examines three Italian CSOs which are among the best organised and most active and have a remarkable capacity for projection abroad.
The groups examined – Libera, Legambiente and the Community of Sant'Egidio – pursue value-based goals: promotion of the rule of law (Libera), environmental protection (Legambiente) and international solidarity (Community of Sant'Egidio). While other case studies could have been selected, this article focuses on these three in so far as they have different yet comparable characteristics, making it possible to delve into the dynamics underlying the foreign policy dimension of Italian CSO activities. The article also examines the strengths and weaknesses of these organisations, opening the ground for further thoughts about their future.

The explosion of Italian CSOs. The march of the unknowns

Civil society groups and organisations are increasingly gaining ground in both peaceful societies as well as in contexts marked by conflict. The literature broadly acknowledges the increasingly prominent role that CSOs are playing in society. And their activity is, of course, influenced by another fundamental factor: globalisation. This phenomenon has prompted CSOs to explore new horizons, adapting themselves to the new global dimension. Hence the explosion of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and the perception of a more connected “global civil society”. Keck and Sikkink, for instance, point to the role of TANs in domestic and international politics, arguing that political culture around the world, together with the creation of a new global civil society, has raised interest in international networking and spurred transnational activism. Thus, the internationalisation of CSOs has gradually led local movements to become active at the international level as well.
Such changes have also manifested themselves among Italian CSOs and a flurry of writings, essays and documents delving into these issues has appeared. The only reliable data regarding NPOs and CSOs, however, stems from the only statistical analysis ever carried out in Italy on the subject, published by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in 1999.
The most striking point highlighted by the survey concerns the rise in the number of NPOs: according to the (partial) data for 1991, there were 61,376 NPOs in Italy at that time, whereas in 1999 they numbered 221,412, an increase of 260.7 percent. Since then, an important constitutional reform has further guaranteed the growth of civil society and non-profit organisations. According to the new Article 118 introduced into the Constitution in 2001, “[t]he State, Regional, Provincial and Municipal administrations favour the free initiative of citizens, as individuals and organisations, in order to accomplish activities of general interest on the basis of the principle of subsidiarity”. Hence the principle of “horizontal” subsidiarity guarantees constitutional recognition of NPOs.
This new and growing third sector has both an economic dimension and a social one. Indeed, in the last twenty years, the “non-profit world” has generated approximately 1 million jobs in Italy. The Agency mentioned earlier is also engaged in creating a transnational web of information and communication at the European level to transcend national boundaries and make it easier for CSOs to play a deeper role and have more sway in international issues and policies. In this respect, the Agency signed a Protocol of Understanding with the EU Representation in Italy in 2007 to help strengthen the Italian third sector’s commitment to EU activities, as well as to reinforce cooperative ties with CSOs in other member states.

Italian civil society in international affairs: three case studies

A look will now be taken at some Italian organisations that can be seen as having or having had an influential role in foreign policy, either by creating transnational links with counterparts in other countries or by fostering an “international interest” on specific issues. One point has to be stressed: the importance of “values” in the proliferation of Italian CSOs. Values have proven to be of the utmost importance in Italian civil society, whether it be respect for the rule of law, protection of the environment, non-violence, solidarity or the fight against poverty. These values represent the common thread in each of the three groups of CSOs analysed below.

Respect for the rule of law. Libera, Terra del Fuoco, FLARE.

According to the FBI, “the economic impact alone [of organised crime] is staggering: it’s estimated that global organised crime reaps illegal profits of around US$ 1 trillion per year.” Italian society is particularly sensitive to this issue, mainly as a consequence of the pervasiveness of various forms of organised crime, with different names, from region to region. This social disease affects southern Italian regions in particular, where organised crime has been allowed to prosper without any definitive cure implemented so far. But it has gradually spread throughout the peninsula and, as we shall see below, beyond it. The blame lies on both sides: neither political actors and governments nor social actors (e.g. associations, trade unions, the Church, private citizens) have been able to take effective action against this great Italian evil.
Nevertheless, some changes loom on the horizon, especially in that part of Italy which is most strongly affected by the problem. In recent years, and on some occasions in recent decades, Italian society has gradually taken a more proactive stance vis-à-vis some issues regarded as particularly sensitive. It is as if the “collective consciousness” has been awakened by events that have taken place. Pressure from civil society has gradually mounted, particularly from the more organised and influential Italian CSOs.
This is the case of Libera (Free), an association established in 1995 to involve and support those interested in the fight against the mafia and organised crime. Less than 15 years later, this CSO has created a nationwide – and transnational – web comprising approximately 1200 associations, groups and schools, and built up synergies between the political and cultural spheres in an attempt to promote a culture of lawfulness.
One of the most effective and successful campaigns promoted by this organisation was for the introduction of a law making it possible to use the real estate confiscated from organised crime for social purposes. Law 109/96 is at the forefront in the fight against organised crime in Italy and represents the first example of its kind. No similar laws have been approved by other countries so far, making it one small success in the fight for the rule of law, with Libera its main proponent.
Libera has also promoted other initiatives such as the setting up of “Libera Memory”, a comprehensive database of mafia victims, recording their names and faces. In 1995, Libera chose 21 March, the first day of spring and thus a symbol of hope and renewal, as the “Day of Memory”.
Of the associations that have joined Libera’s campaigns, one stands out for its efforts to give this work a greater international, and more specially, European dimension: Terra del Fuoco. This CSO is committed to supporting the process of European integration in that it believes that “the constitution of a transnational, [European] subject [is] the generational objective of the children of the 20th century”. What is important here is the partnership established between Terra del Fuoco and Libera and, above all, their mutual project. Since August 2007, they have been working together to establish FLARE, an international – mainly European – network of CSOs. The acronym stands for “Freedom, Legality and Rights in Europe” and the association therefore represents an “international version” of Libera, devoted to the social struggle against all forms of mafia and transnational organised crime. FLARE was established in Brussels on 10 June 2008, after a declaration of membership was signed at the European Parliament by nearly 50 associations and CSOs from 25 European and neighbourhood countries. FLARE intends to focus on two main points, which Libera already stresses. The first is the approval of European legislation combating organised crime, modelled on the Italian Law 109/96. The second is the creation of a “memory bank”, establishing a well-organised network of families and individuals who have been victims of mafia crimes. On the day of its foundation, FLARE put forward a proposal to the European Parliament and Commission to make 21 March the “European Day of Memory for Mafia Victims” and to set up a European Agency for the confiscation and transfer of real estate belonging to organised crime.
FLARE is also committed to finding European funds for the fight against organised crime in order to favour the emergence of national CSOs such as Libera, thus allowing for the “bottom-up push” against all forms of mafia to continue. Luigi Ciotti, the founder of Libera, has stated that, “To the globalisation of organised crime, we reply with the globalisation of citizenship.” The EU Vice President and Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security, Jacques Barrot, declared his strong support for the Italian-led initiative.
Libera has also promoted “Libera Internazionale”, a project pushing for, among other things, the implementation of laws modelled on the Italian Law 109/96 in those regions and countries worldwide where organised crime flourishes, such as Colombia, where organised crime operates undisturbed. To that end, Libera has asked the Milan provincial administration to set up an observatory to raise awareness of the Colombian reality and give voice to its victims. This is by far the most notable example of the foreign policy influence this Italian CSO has had on public institutions.

Protecting the environment. Legambiente

Since forms of mafia are so profoundly embedded in Italian society that their tentacles are able to reach all facets of daily life. In recent years, some sectors of organised crime have added to one of their usual activities, construction without building permits, to the fruitful businesses of illegally trafficking in waste and waste disposal, and illegal excavation: in a word, “ecomafia”. This term was coined by the leading and by far most influential environmental organisation on the crowded Italian environmental CSO scene, Legambiente. Founded in 1980, when the global spread of cross-cutting “green movements” led to the emergence of “green parties”, today Legambiente, an organisation addressing all aspects of environmental policy, has more than 1,000 local groups, 20 regional committees and nearly 115,000 members.
In 1994, the state of emergency declared in Naples as a result of ineffective waste disposal was not positively solved, also as a result of the involvement of organised crime. The problem reached a climax in 2007-08, when the government decided to construct new incinerators and follow a new strategy for waste disposal. Although the issue was suddenly brought into the international spotlight after the garbage piled up in the city, even though the garbage problem was only one of the causes that opened Pandora’s box, Legambiente has worked on the waste/mafia link since 1997, when it published its first Ecomafia Report. It has continued to do so, working with police forces and a group of judges and lawyers specialised in environmental crime. According to the latest Report (2008), the “ecomafia phenomenon” is gaining ground dramatically: 83 offences are committed every day, 3 per hour, with an increase of 27.3 percent with respect to 2006. In 2006, Legambiente joined Libera to promote the fight against all forms of mafia and support six main values: freedom, justice, information, solidarity, legality and citizenship.
Legambiente also gives importance to the international dimension of this problem: waste moves undisturbed not only from the Italian peninsula to China, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Tunisia and Senegal but also in the opposite direction, coming to Italy from Albania, Croatia and Serbia. It is this globalisation of the phenomenon that prompted the CSO to think up a globalised reaction. To this end, Legambiente recently organised a “No Ecomafia tour” that also traveled to Brussels in an attempt to generate deeper cooperation among citizens and EU institutions, as well as better knowledge of the issue at a European level.
To improve transnational cooperation on this issue, in 2003, Italy and Spain launched a one-year research project on the ecomafia in both countries, the first comparative study of its kind ever published in Europe. The project focused on the role of organised crime in controlling and facilitating the illegal trafficking of dangerous and special wastes since the mid-1990s. The study, co-financed by the European Commission, represented the first attempt to map the recent tendencies of transnational environmental crime. Following the Italian environmental lobbying activities, in February 2007, the European Commission together with the European Parliament adopted a new proposal for a directive on environmental crime. In this respect, Michele Buonomo, president of Legambiente Campania, supported the approval of an EU directive on environmental crime by the ENVI (Environment, Public Health and Food Safety) Committee delegation to Italy in 2006.
Hence, although Legambiente first came to the fore with the motto “think globally, act locally”, it has increasingly acted globally as well. Indeed, while working locally in order to be rooted and have a say in Italian society, Legambiente has engaged more and more in international activism. The CSO is a member of the European Environmental Bureau, which includes the most influential environmental organisations in Europe, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In addition, Legambiente opened a European office in Brussels in 2000 to promote a “clean and virtuous environmental lobby”. The European branch publishes Europe Watch, a “civil society observatory” on the European environment.
Exemplifying Legambiente’s step-by-step international involvement is Goletta Verde, a laboratory ship that verifies the conditions of Italy’s coastal waters every summer. This campaign has aroused so much interest that, in the last five years, Legambiente has launched a joint project with other Mediterranean countries, Profondo Blu, supported by the Italian Ministry of Environment.
Legambiente has also fostered global cooperation with its counterparts, especially the Italian branches of Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). With the former, Legambiente has campaigned against the dumping of toxic waste in Somalia and in favour of the use of wind energy. With the latter, it has worked to oppose hunting and to propose heavy transportation taxes. Together, the three have supported the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in Italy and the “No al Nucleare” campaign, against the use of nuclear energy for civilian purposes.
Legambiente’s commitment to the nuclear issue can be traced back to the 1980s and especially the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which provoked a wave of fear and opposition to nuclear energy. Rome-based mass protests reached a peak of 200,000 participants, paving the way for the victory of the 1987 referendum banning the use of nuclear energy. This resulted in the shutdown of Italy’s four nuclear power plants. Furthermore, Legambiente promoted the “Chernobyl project” in collaboration with Bielorussian institutions, offering hospitality to children affected by nuclear radiation. As a spin-off effect of the anti-nuclear green movement, the Italian Green Party came into being in the late 1980s. “The anti-nuclear victory consecrated green issues at central in the country’s public debate. They became fashionable, in.”

Commitment to solidarity. The Comunity of Sant’Egidio

As already tested in the cases of Libera and Legambiente, the respect for and commitment to some fundamental values on the part of Italian CSOs is striking. Especially when it comes to principles such as solidarity, peace or non-violence the need for safeguarding them is perceived as essential. This is the case of the Sant’Egidio Community, a Rome-based organisation born in 1968 on the initiative of a group of high school students. The Community was initially established as a solidarity group devoting itself to the poor and the dispossessed, whose primary objective was to help the elderly, the mentally and physically disabled, children, immigrants and all marginalised people. The periphery of Rome was the centre of its activities.
Unlike Libera and Legambiente, this CSO benefits from a particular “glue” which guarantees that its members adhere completely to St. Egidio’s values and guiding principles, that is religion. Indeed, the organisation was born as an ecumenical movement aiming to spread the Gospel; today it considers itself a public association of laypeople of the Church. Catholicism has inevitably permeated the CSO’s discourse, even influencing the method of recruitment within its inner circle. The original members of the organisation are embedded in religious circles, and still today the relationship between the Community and the Holy See is so close that the former might be considered an increasingly powerful branch of the latter. In this respect, the founder of the organisation, Andrea Riccardi, commenting on the meeting between the Community and US President George W. Bush in 2007, wrote that this unusual encounter attested to the capacity of the Catholic Church to be universal through its commitment of local institutions. Notwithstanding the mechanism of co-optation adopted for recruitment of leadership and the strong links with the Vatican, the organisation has gradually reversed this top-down approach, allowing the Community to expand and giving society at large a chance to be part of it.
Since religion is the glue of the organisation, it goes without saying that inter-religious dialogue is regarded as essential. To this end, since 1986, the Community of Sant’Egidio has organised an annual international meeting to foster dialogue, especially among the three religions of the Mediterranean, that is Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The last conference, held in Cyprus in November 2008, highlighted the link between peace and inter-religious dialogue: it is hardly possible to achieve the former without working together on the latter. Forty representatives of different religions attended the meeting, symbolically crossing the boundaries between the Greek and Turkish sides of Cyprus.
To date, the Community has transcended national boundaries, establishing its offices in 70 countries worldwide and counting more than 50,000 members. Sant’Egidio’s objectives have expanded as well: the value of solidarity still drives the Community’s missions, immediately followed by the goal of peacemaking, which is the focus of most activities abroad. This is particularly true with regard to the organisation’s engagement in conflict resolution, as in the cases of Mozambique and Guatemala.
With regard to the former, the Community was able to open up a dialogue between the two main national actors, that is the Frelimo regime and the Renamo guerrilla movement. The most effective instrument that the Community put into effect was to recognise both the parties to the conflict as legitimate actors, inviting the leader of Renamo, Alphonso Marceta Dhlakama, to the first meeting between the two sides in Rome in 1990. The Community of Sant’Egidio acted as a neutral mediator, stressing that peacemaking was its ultimate goal and avoiding rallying one or the other side in opposition. The activity carried out by the Community was collateral to official diplomacy, but it strongly contributed to the resolution of the conflict: as then UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared, the Sant’Egidio formula is admirable “for this unique mixture of governmental and non-governmental peacemaking activity”.
Similarly, with respect to the conflict in Guatemala, the Community worked to create informal and direct contacts between the government exponents and members of the guerrilla movement (Union Rivolucionaria Nacional de Guatemala). While maintaining contacts with both the United Nations and the governments involved, the Italian CSO held a meeting of both parties in Rome in 1996.
More recently, in March 2007, the Community participated in the debate on the agreement signed in Burkina Faso between the parties involved in the civil conflict in Ivory Coast. On this occasion, both sides called for the participation of the Community, thus acknowledging its role as an honest broker.
Besides its engagement in conflict resolution, the Sant’Egidio Community works in three other fields. First, it is deeply involved in international solidarity, especially in those areas particularly affected by wars, natural disasters or other kinds of crisis. A critical case in point is the humanitarian aid offered to the Southeast Asian regions hit by the tsunami in 2004. The Community implemented a package of emergency aid and development assistance for the populations. Since 2000, the Community has also activated projects offering help to the Albanian population, giving priority to children, the mentally and physically disabled and the homeless.
Second, as a consequence of its commitment to non-violence, the Community of Sant’Egidio has always proclaimed its opposition to the death penalty. In September 2008, the Community organised an international meeting in Rome, inviting representatives from 16 countries, to debate the worldwide abolition of the death penalty. Under the banner of “No justice without life”, the Community has promoted the establishment of the “International Day against the Death Penalty” on 30 November. More importantly, it has founded the “World Coalition against the Death Penalty” to coordinate the global initiatives taken worldwide. Furthermore, as proof that the Community has not forgotten its original objective, that is solidarity, it has created a web of contacts allowing people from all parts of the world to write online to the more than 1000 persons sentenced to death.
Third, although involved on all continents, the Community is especially concerned with the African countries, which provided the first international terrain for its activities. As war is but one of the unsolved problems afflicting these areas, the Italian CSO has gradually tackled other important and outstanding issues. Among them, the AIDS epidemic. Since 2002, the Community has launched the Drug Resource Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition (DREAM) program to slow down the spread of the disease. The project guarantees therapy in accordance with Western standards and allows for free and easy access to medical structures. So far, DREAM operates in ten African countries, but while it has reached nationwide diffusion in Mozambique and Malawi, it has fewer structures and a lower level of organisation in the other countries.

Towards the future - some expectations

These three case studies attest to the increasingly active role of Italian CSOs in the international arena. Without pretending to consider them the sole representatives of the broad spectrum of Italian CSOs, their outstanding relevance is incontrovertible. Furthermore, these three CSOs reflect the conclusions drawn by the Civicus Civil Society Index Report, which analysed all Italian CSOs. As stated in the Report, values drive Italian civil society in its quest for a more influential role.
The report identifies four main indicators in its analysis of civil society: the structure of CSOs, the environment that surrounds them, the values they refer to, and the impact of their activities. Of the four, the Report concludes that the third variable takes on the greatest importance in Italy. Indeed, indicators regarding CSOs’ attitudes towards democracy, solidarity and non-violence received the highest scores, as did those regarding environmental protection. As a result, the “value variable”, as defined in this article, is fundamental in assessing the success of some Italian CSOs: Libera’s commitment to restoring the rule of law, Legambiente’s to protecting the environment, the Comunity of Sant’Egidio’s to assuring international solidarity.
Nonetheless, this variable alone cannot explain the relative effectiveness of CSO activities in the international realm. The strength of Italian CSOs deriving from their commitment to values is counterbalanced, sometimes outweighed, by certain weaknesses. In particular, three factors risk downsizing the influence of CSOs on a national, and therefore also international, level:

• the role of the state: it presumes to be the legitimate actor to deal with public issues, thus undermining the growing importance of civil society hitherto;
• the role of political parties: regarded as the most influential channels of citizen participation in the public sphere, these actors tend to overshadow CSOs;
• the role of the Catholic Church: the social pre-eminence of this institution tends to limit the role and the room for action of secular CSOs.

What do the three case studies tell us about these three sets of limitations? The government and, more broadly, all state institutions tend to view CSOs positively, as an expression of democracy and a critical channel towards society. However, mistrust and low esteem for the stances of some CSOs contaminate the discourse between the two sides. This ambivalence has been defined as a sort of “Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde syndrome”, according to which state institutions have two views of Italian CSOs: “as a resource and as a threat”. These views have in turn tempted many from civil society organisations to get directly involved in politics and institutions in order to be able to have a greater say on policy than simply through civil society activism. The risk however is of being overwhelmed by institutional rules and ties, as was the case with the Italian Green Party, established as a political branch of the green movement, but thereafter caught up in political power dynamics. Instead of committing itself to further strengthening the link between civil society and Legambiente, for example, the green movement became involved and remained hemmed in by political power.
The overarching focus on party politics in Italy tends to exclude CSOs, which are not directly involved in day-to-day politics and policymaking. Whereas the Italian public is likely to agree on many of the values that prompt CSOs to act, people appear to engage in civic activism only to a limited extent because of the predominance of the state and the belief that CSOs are by and large politically “irrelevant”.
As a result, a more cooperative yet distinct role on the part of the state is by far the most important goal that CSOs need to achieve if they are to function as influential actors in both the domestic and international arena. Learning from these experiences, information and communications have to be directed first and foremost at political and institutional actors, thus generating a more fluid debate between the two sides. Not only do Italian CSOs have to extend their voice within society, but they also have to involve the state in their activities and gain the state’s support for their activities abroad. In this respect, some positive steps have been taken to enhance national legislation in response to the demands of CSOs, as was the case with Law 109/96 on the social use of real estate confiscated from organised crime, by far Libera’s greatest success.
In addition, the lack of accurate information as well as interest by the Italian media towards civil society activity must be considered. The representation of CSO activities in the media is often distorted negatively, preventing the Italian public from fully recognising the importance and contribution of CSOs. A case in point is the lack of information and articles on the international meeting on inter-religious dialogue held in Cyprus and organised by the Sant’Egidio Community. Of the most influential Italian newspapers, only La Stampa published an article on the subject. Both state institutions and the media’s attitudes hold sway over the public, contributing to the mounting “popular” mistrust and narrow opinions on these organisations. Sometimes they tend to be conceived and described as a collateral branch of state institutions, as if they do not have their own social personality and independence.
Finally, relations with the Catholic Church have their problematic sides. The influence of the Church risks diluting – perhaps even overwhelming – the power of Italian civil society. On a European and international level, the Church could act as a common thread among Italian CSOs and their counterparts in other countries, in so far as it is a transnational organisation whose members are located worldwide, in the way that Protestant human rights organisations in northern Europe are tightly linked through networks such as APRODEV (Association of the World Council of Churches related Development Organisations in Europe). This could be important for FLARE, for example, considering its appeal to and overlap with Christian values. It goes without saying that this connection with the Catholic Church is already evident in the case of the Sant’Egidio Community, which is strongly linked to the Holy See and benefits from this relationship on an international level.
More must also be done with respect to education and information. Some youth training programmes and research projects are already underway, such as Libera’s seminars scheduled for 2008-09 in London, Naples and The Hague, or the comparative study on ecomafias to be carried out in Italy and Spain. Nevertheless, the problem is to assess the audience of such events and studies, their size and potential for growth.
In all three cases considered, the CSOs were first activated by a small group of citizens. However, it is precisely the enlargement of this inner circle that guarantees the success of any CSO. If this does not happen, the organisation risks becoming close-minded, contradicting the real reason why it was established. Hence the need for a global and globalised communication on civil society activism. This means, first and foremost, strengthening and deepening transnational links by transcending national boundaries.
In this respect, in 2007 Johan Galtung, the founder of TRANSCEND International, a peace and development network, stated unequivocally: “[…] to contribute something to solving big problems you must think big thoughts. Small thoughts will do for small problems, like standardization of car bumpers. Check your thoughts, let them grow with the people concerned. […] The non-governments can probably do it better than the governments.” The role of Italian CSOs in foreign policy needs to be shaped on these grounds.

Concluding remarks

It is rather difficult to summarise the wide scenario of Italian CSOs that has expanded in the last decade. This article has focused on some of their emerging characteristics by taking account of three of the most influential CSOs in Italy. The goal was to provide some insight into the international outreach of Italian civil society.
One characteristic of Italian civil society organisations that emerges is their attachment to values and the will to promote them. The three case studies were chosen in that they represent telling examples of organisations born to safeguard some specific value, be it the rule of law, the environment, peace or solidarity. Their added value has consisted of transcending national boundaries and proclaiming the respect of such principles abroad as well as within the country. The call of these organisations to society has been powerful precisely because they appeal to powerful values, which are effective in mobilising transnational groups and linking them worldwide.
In addition, the three CSOs have also been able to “capture” institutional attention, obtaining important recognition within their country and beyond it. What is essential for reaching an international audience is to gain political support from state institutions, in order to be legitimated and have more of a say within and abroad. Nevertheless, CSOs must maintain their independence from political power, acting as separate actors whose voice represents the expression of the people rather than the echo of the government.

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